, 


THE    GREAT    FRENCH    WRITERS 


VICTOR    COUSIN 


®reat  JFmtci)  (KHrfters. 


MADAME  DE   SfiVIGNfi    ...  BY  GASTON  BOISSIER. 

GEORGE    SAND BY  E.  CARD. 

MONTESQUIEU BY  ALBERT  SOREL. 

VICTOR  COUSIN BY  JULES  SIMON. 

TURGOT By  LEON  SAY. 

OTHER    VOLUMES    IN     PREPARATION. 


Uniform  in  style.     Price,  $1.00  a  volume. 


OEe  0rrat 


VICTOR  COUSIN 

BY  JULES    SIMON 


TRANSLATED  BY 

MELVILLE    B.  ANDERSON 
EDWARD    PLAYFAIR    ANDERSON 


CHICAGO 

A.  C.  McCLURG   AND   COMPANY 
1888 


COPYRIGHT 
By  A.  C.  MCCLURG  AND  COMPANY 

A.  D.    1888 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  L 
His  BIOGRAPHY. 

Notoriety,  9.  —  Opportunities,  10.  — Admirers  and  enemies, 
12, — Birth  and  parentage,  13.  —  His  fists  make  him  a 
philosopher,  14.  — Brilliant  success  in  his  studies,  15. — 
Professor  of  Greek  at  twenty,  it— Dearth  of  instruction 
in  philosophy,  16.  — La  Romiguiere  and  Royer-CoHard, 
17.  — Jouflroy :  «  Phflosophy  in  a  hole,"  19.  —Enlistment 
in  the  royal  Tolnnteers,  20.  —  Royer-Collards  sabstitute, 
20. — Lectures  on  Scotch  philosophy,  22. — Studies  Kant : 
goes  to  Germany,  22.— Visits  Jacobi,  Schelling,  Hegel, 
23- — Lectures  on  the  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, 24. — The  royalist  reaction  suppresses  his  lectures, 
25.— His  occupation  gone,  27.  —  Imprisoned  in  Germany, 
28. — Translation  of  Plato,  29. — The  martyr  restored  to 
his  professorship,  30.  —  Popularity,  31.  —  Philosophic 
treatment  of  history,  31. — The  Charter,  33.  —  Revolu- 
tion of  1830,  33.  —  A  revolutionist  in  spite  of  himself,  34. 
—  Laden  with  honors,  36. — Opposed  the  Revolution  of 
1848,  36.  — Retirement,  37. 

CHAPTER  IL 
His  PHILOSOPHY. 

Pierre  Leroux's  pamphlet  against  Cousin,  38.  —  Distinction 
is  not  separation,  39.  —  Cousin's  philosophy  based  on 
psychology,  40.— His  little  modern  learning,  40.— Kant 
and- Berkeley,  41.  —  Hegel  and  Schleiermacher,  43.— 
Cousin's  Phflosophy :  Impersonality  of  Reason,  44.  — 


2021094 


iv  Contents. 

Spontaneity  precedes  reflection,  45.  —  Spontaneity  reveals 
the  reality  of  the  non-ego,  46.  —  Citations  from  Cousin,  46. 

—  His  metaphysical  clearness,  47.  —  No  world  without 
God,   no   God  without  the  world.  48.  —  His  pantheism, 
49. —  His  view  of  creation,  50.  —  Alternation  of  the  four 
systems,  52.  —  Eclecticism   in   politics,  52. —  Brief  sum- 
mary of  his  whole  system,  54,  —  Its  completeness,  55.  — 
Refutation  of  Locke,  57.  —  Inadequacy  of  the  categories 
of  causality  and  substance,  57.  —  Kant's  problem  exists  for 
the  spontaneous  as  for  the  reflective  stage,  59.  —  Cousin's 
mysticism,  63.  —  Philosophy  explains  the  how  of  nothing, 
65.  —  Atheism  and  religion,  65.  —  Prevalent  doubts,  67.  — 
Cousin  would  be  orthodox ;  he  disavows  pantheism,  68. 

—  Pantheism  brings  no  gain  in  clearness,  70.  — Article  on 
"Xenophanes  and  the  Eleatics,"  71.  —  Cousin  appeals  to 
common  sense,  72. —  Purity  of  his  morality,  73.  —  Its  one 
defect,  the  absolution  of  success,  74.  —  Who  was  con- 
quered at  Waterloo?  75.  —  Cousin,  the  tribune  and  ora- 
tor, 77. —  The  four  systems  do  not  alternate,  78.  —  Gaps 
in  Cousin's  learning,  79.  —  What  is  eclecticism  ?  80.  —  Its 
pretensions  to  be  rejected,  81.  —  Evil  effects  of  eclecticism 
on  its  adherents,  82.  —  Defects  in  Cousin's  doctrine  as  a 
whole,  83.  —  Cousin  loses  the  metaphysical  fever,  84. — 
Faithful  to  his  doctrines,  but  loses  faith  in  his  explana- 
tions, 85.  —  Writes  no  great  systematic  work  on  philoso- 
phy, 86.  —  Abandons  teaching  in  1830,  87.  —  Except  the 
course   at  the   Normal   School,  88.  —  The   bold   thinker 
merged  in  the  cautious  magistrate,  90. 


CHAPTER   III. 
His  REGIMENT. 

COUSIN  THE  AUTOCRAT  OF  ALL   FRENCH   INSTRUCTION 

IN  PHILOSOPHY. 

His  position,  appearance,  popularity  in  1830,  92. —  His  teach- 
ing ceases  when  he  is  promoted  by  the  July  Revolution,  94. 


Contents.  v 

—  Greatness  thrust  upon  him,  95.  —  The  Council  of  Pub- 
lic Instruction,  then  and  now,  97.  — The  Normal  School, 
and  Cousin  as  its  manager,  99.  —  His  eccentricities,  too. 

—  His  treatment  of  inferiors,  102.  —  The  Sunday  lecture, 
103.  —  Its  subject,  1 06.  —  Cousin  weeps  at  the  death  of 
Carrel,  106. —  Professional  policy,  107.  —  Books  we  should 
recommend  to   pupils,    109.  —  Alleged    freedom   of    his 
pupils,  109.  —  Competition  for  fellowships,  under  Cousin, 
in.  —  His  implacable  memory,  113.  —  His  severe  disci- 
pline, 115.  —  His  knowledge  of  his  soldiers,  116.  —  His 
officers  visit  headquarters,  117.  —  His   influence  in  the 
French   Academy,   119. —  Candidacies   of  Michelet  and 
Ancelot,  120.  —  My  own,  120.  —  His  interest  in  examina- 
tions for  the  doctorate,  121.  —  His  competence  to  speak 
on  any  subject,  123.  —  His  mastery  of  the  monologue, 
124.  —  His  delight  on  becoming  Minister,  126.  —  Draw- 
backs to  his  happiness,  127.  —  The  Councillor  had  pre- 
pared the  way  for  the  Minister,  127.  —  His  competence 
in   primary   instruction,   128.  —  Objections   to   replacing 
good  elementary  schools  by  poor  colleges,  129.  —  Espe- 
cial attention  to  higher  education,  130. —  Universities  for 
France  on  the  German  model,  130.  —  Love  of  publicity, 
131.  —  Appoints  Jouffroy  his  successor  in  the  Council,  131. 

—  Fall  of  the  ministry  in  1840;  Cousin's  straitened  cir- 
cumstances, 132.  —  Resumes  his  place  as  Councillor  in 
1842,  134.  —  His  love  of  justice  and  his  devotion  to  rising 
talent,   135.  —  His   self-satisfaction,   136. — Three   things 
he  admired,  137.  —  Results  of  his  twenty  years'  sway,  138. 

—  To  every  teacher  a  task  with  Cousin's  assistance,  139. 

—  He  had  some  disciples  but  no  school,  140.  —  Freedom 
to  philosophize  according  to  his  catechism,  141. — "I  am 
philosophy,"  142.  —  Substitutes  for  professors  of  the  old 
school,  142. —  Professors  humiliated  by  his  strict  control, 
143- 


vi  Contents. 

CHAPTER   IV. 
His  BATTLES. 

Philosophy  and  free  speech,  144.  —  Can  any  doctrine  what- 
ever be  taught  in  public  schools?  144.  —  Reply  of  the 
father,  145.  —  Reply  of  the  state,  146. — Neutral  instruc- 
tion a  recent  invention,  147.  —  Both  the  Empire  and  the 
Restoration  imposed  Catholic  doctrines,  147.  —  After  1830 
Cousin  suppressed  liberty,  148. — One  doctrine  for  phi- 
losophers, another  for  children,  149.  —  Philosophy  must 
not  meddle  with  religion,  150.  —  Such  philosophy  no  longer 
philosophy,  151.  —  Cousin  professes  orthodoxy  and  claims 
independence,  151.  —  The  Church  challenges  his  ortho- 
doxy, 152. — The  charge  of  pantheism,  153.  —  Cousin 
militant  and  Cousin  regnant,  154. —  Philosophy  for  the 
few,  religion  for  the  many,  155.  —  "To  oppose  religion  is 
criminal,"  156.  —  Cousin's  Catechism,  157.  —  Mass  com- 
pulsory at  the  Normal  School,  162. —Neutrality  in  re- 
ligion, spiritualism  in  philosophy,  163.  —  Louis  Philippe's 
fear  of  trouble  with  the  "good  queen,"  164.  —  Cousin  and 
the  young  professors,  165.  —  Our  dinner  on  Good  Friday, 
166.  —  Philosophy  threatened,  167.  —  Cousin  as  a  come- 
dian, 169.  —  Veuillot  demands  liberty  of  instruction,  170. 

—  Veuillot  attacks   Cousin,  171.  —  Veuillot's   allies  and 
imitators,  173.  —  Leroux  accuses  the  professors  of  coward- 
ice, 174.  —  The  statesmen  want  peace  at  any  price,  174.  — 
Cousin  has  his  hands  full,  175.  —  His  "Defence  of  the 
University  and  of  Philosophy,"  176.  —  His  trial  and  tri- 
umph, 177.  —  He  defends  the  university  monopoly,  178. 

—  All  the  Liberals  support  him,   179.  —  His  opponents 
silenced,  180.  —  The  philosophers  safe  but  dishonored, 
182.  —  The  Charpentier  "Collection;"   unexpected  aid, 
182.  —  Other  instances  of  Cousin's  intermeddling,  184. — 
Member  of  the  Commission  of  1850,  185.  —  Conservatism 
of  Thiers,  186.  —  Dupanloup   and   Montalembert  versus 
Thiers  and  Cousin,  187.  — The  Education  Act  of  1850 


Contents.  vii 

a  defeat  for  the  University,  1 88.  — Cousin's  retirement 
under  die  Second  Empire,  189. 

CHAPTER  V. 
His  LOVES. 

Unity  of  Cousin's  life,  191.  —  His  nine  volumes  on  the 
women  and  society  of  the  seventeenth  century,  192. — 
Pascal  diverts  him  from  philosophy,  193.  —  Episode  of 
Joofrfoy's  "Memoirs,"  193.  — Their  mutilation  "by  the 
Eclectics,"  196.  —  Cousin  condemns  the  mutilation  of 
Pascal,  197.  — Cousin's  library,  197.  —  The  book  he  did 
not  present  to  the  Duchess  of  Orleans,  199.  —  His  passion 
for  bringing  out  unpublished  works,  200. — Anecdote  of 
the  Malebranche  manuscript,  201.  —  Cousin's  books  about 
seventeenth-century  women,  204.  —  Madame  de  Longue- 
vffle's  posthumous  lover,  206.  —  Cousin,  Sainte-Beuve, 
and  Mkhelet  as  literary  artists,  207.  —  Taine's  criticisms 
refuted,  209.  —  Charm  of  these  books,  210.  —  Mode  of 
composition  and  publication,  212.  —  Variety  of  Cousin's 
literary  works,  213.  —  Cultivated  the  politics  of  philoso- 
phy, 213. — Taine's  picture  of  Cousin's  sermon  before 
Madame  de  Longueville,  214.  —  A  companion-piece,  214. 
—  Summary  of  his  life  and  services,  215.  — One  of  the 
219. 


VICTOR    COUSIN. 

CHAPTER  I. 

HIS     BIOGRAPHY. 

SOME  men  make  much  noise  during  theif 
lives,  and  are  unknown  to  posterity.  M. 
Victor  Cousin  is  not  such  a  man.  He  immor- 
talized his  name  by  great  services  and  brilliant 
works ;  but  those  who  did  not  live  in  his  time 
cannot  imagine  what  a  noise  he  made  in  the 
world  while  here.  He  liked  this  notoriety,  and 
courted  it.  I  remember  that  on  the  approach 
of  the  Revolution  of  1848,  when  the  noise  of 
political  and  social  discussions  rather  drowned 
the  noise  he  made  with  his  philosophical  and 
religious  discussions,  he  trembled  for  fear  of 
being  forgotten.  "  It  is  necessary  to  show 
one's  self,"  said  he  to  me.  "  I  have  a  feeling 
that  we  need  to  show  ourselves."  He  said  "  we 
need."  as  the  king  says  "we  will."  When  he 
was  Minister  of  Public  Instruction,  —  a  post  he 


io  Victor  Cousin. 

held  for  but  eight  months,  —  he  filled  "  The 
Moniteur  "  and  the  official  newspapers  with  his 
orders,  his  circulars,  his  public  speeches,  his 
small  talk,  and  his  plans.  M.  Damiron,  called 
by  Cousin  himself  the  wisest  of  the  wise,  gently 
chid  him :  "  You  show  yourself  too  much  ;  you 
will  weary  the  public."  But  Cousin  replied, 
"  We  must  show  ourselves." 

And  this  was  the  one  of  all  his  passions  that 
was  most  completely  satisfied.  He  came  at  a 
time  when  there  was  a  great  dearth  of  literary 
talent.  Public  instruction  had  stopped  during 
the  years  of  terror ;  the  few  self-educated  men 
were  seized  by  the  army  or  by  the  administra- 
tion. Every  one  had  been  enlisted  in  one  way 
or  another.  Hardly  a  man  was  left  at  liberty. 
Michelet  tells  how,  at  the  time  of  his  gradua- 
tion, —  four  or  five  years  after  Cousin,  —  the 
publishers  snatched  at  the  pettiest  scholar  in 
the  hope  of  finding  material  for  a  man  of  let- 
ters. That  was  a  fine  time  to  show  one's  self; 
one  was  not  hidden  by  a  crowd.  The  same 
held  true  of  the  teaching  profession.  Under 
the  Empire,  about  the  only  college  professors 
mentioned  are  Villemain,  Joseph  Victor  Le 
Clerc,  and  Naudet;  but  how  much  they  are 
mentioned !  There  were  no  public  lectures. 
A  private  club  founded  or  revived  "  The  Ly- 
ceum," and  this  at  once  became  very  popular. 


His  Biography.  1 1 

People  felt  a  general  need  of  speech  after  a 
long  silence,  —  I  mean  of  speaking  French  ;  for 
in  that  time  of  clubs  a  dialect  was  spoken  which 
had  nothing  in  common  with  that  of  our  great 
literary  epochs.  In  the  early  years  of  the  Em- 
pire, to  speak  of  literature  in  correct  language 
was  enough  to  insure  success.  If  correct  lan- 
guage was  coupled  with  a  little  wit,  enthusiasm 
was  aroused.  The  Parisian  Literary  Faculty 
began  their  lectures  in  1809,  in  the  buildings 
of  the  College  du  Plessis.  As  soon  as  Ville- 
main  had  a  public  lectureship  he  was  popu- 
lar. La  Romiguiere's  lectures  on  psychology 
were  as  renowned  among  the  women  as  Bour- 
daloue's  sermons  had  been.  They  attended 
Lacretelle's  course  in  crowds,  till  he  was  com- 
pelled to  forbid  their  coming.  M.  Royer- 
Collard  never  had  more  than  a  limited  public. 
He  spoke  well,  with  a  certain  austerity  that  won 
assent  but  repelled  infatuation.  When  I  say 
he  spoke  well,  I  am  in  error ;  what  should  be 
said  is,  that  he  read  well.  Some  years  later, 
when  people  saw  and  heard  Cousin,  the  effect 
was  prodigious.  He  looked  like  an  apparition. 
Imagine  a  slender  youth  of  twenty- three,  with 
an  expressive  face  and  blazing  eyes,  seeming 
during  the  first  moments  like  a  dying  man, 
gradually  warming  to  his  subject,  letting  the 
audience  see  his  mind  at  work,  seeking  for 


12  Victor  Cousin. 

words,  finding  admirable  ones,  —  clear  enough 
to  give  people  some  inkling  of  what  they  were 
applauding,  obscure  enough  to  give  play  to  the 
imagination,  —  gifted  with  a  fine  voice,  an  actor 
to  his  finger-tips,  a  thinker  undoubtedly  and 
still  more  of  an  artist,  a  preacher  rather  than 
a  professor,  combining  the  airs  of  the  tri- 
bune with  those  of  the  apostle.  From  the 
first  day  he  had  enthusiasts,  and  even  fanatical 
adorers. 

I  say  enthusiasts,  be  it  observed ;  I  do  not 
say  disciples,  —  his  disciples  were  not  very 
numerous  nor  very  faithful, —  neither  do  I  say 
friends,  for  he  had  but  few.  To  offset  this  he 
had  crowds  of  admirers,  and  before  long  as 
many  enemies.  That  Revolution  which  had 
imperilled  all  heads  and  challenged  all  beliefs, 
had  created  in  the  new  generation  enormous 
intellectual  needs.  Cousin  was  the  first  pro- 
fessor of  philosophy  with  the  courage  to  speak 
of  religion  and  politics.  To  begin  with,  he  had 
against  him  the  then  living  ideologists  and 
the  disciples  of  La  Romiguiere,  both  claiming 
to  represent  the  French  philosophy.  Cousin 
asked  them  if  there  was  also  a  French  geome- 
try. Speedily  bigots  took  alarm,  as  he  found 
out  to  his  cost  when  once  they  had  obtained 
a  decided  advantage.  The  conservatives  also 
took  alarm,  —  even  the  more  liberal  ones,  — 


His  Biography.  13 

and  accused  him  of  disturbing  young  men's 
"  serenity."  To  crown  all,  the  philosophers 
hastened  to  accuse  him  of  timidity.  In  the 
eyes  of  some,  he  was  unsettling  everything ;  in 
the  eyes  of  others,  he  was  granting  everything. 
The  Tories  reproached  him  with  his  love  for  the 
last  Brutus,  and  the  Whigs  with  his  admiration 
for  the  Charter.  M.  de  Bonald  and  M.  Pierre 
Leroux  agreed  in  refusing  him  the  title  of 
philosopher,  but  no  one  disputed  his  genius. 
This  chorus  of  praise  and  blame  gave  him  that 
popularity  which  is  more  intoxicating  than 
fame,  and  is  not  always  followed  by  fame. 
Cousin  owed  his  popularity  to  his  defects,  and 
his  fame  to  his  solid  merits. 

Victor  Cousin  was  born  at  Paris,  Nov.  28, 
1792.  According  to  the  official  record  of  his 
birth,  which  I  have  in  my  possession,  he  was 
a  jeweller's  son.  It  is  repeated  in  his  biogra- 
phies that  he  was  a  watchmaker's  son,  like  Jean 
Jacques  Rousseau.  His  father  was  a  working 
jeweller,  who  may  very  probably  have  been 
employed  at  a  watchmaker's.  Damiron  has 
often  told  me  that  the  mother  did  washing  or 
ironing,  and  Cousin  himself  related  to  me  that 
his  parents'  lodgings  were  reached  by  a  stair- 
way resembling  a  ladder.  In  short,  whatever 
their  business,  they  \vere  a  family  of  poor  work- 
ing people.  He  had  a  brother,  who  never 


14  Victor  Cousin. 

appeared  and  was  never  spoken  of  in  his 
circle.  Victor  Cousin  may  be  said  to  have 
been  bred  in  the  gutter  up  to  the  age  of  ten. 

One  day  early  in  October,  1803,  at  half-past 
four  in  the  afternoon,  the  children  rushed  tu- 
multuously  from  the  Charlemagne  Lyceum, 
pursuing  with  loud  cries  a  schoolmate  clad  in 
a  great-coat,  which  made  him,  in  their  eyes 
at  least,  very  ridiculous.  This  schoolmate  was 
Epagomene  Viguier,  whom  I  afterward  knew 
as  professor  of  Greek  and  director  of  studies  at 
the  Normal  School,  the  mildest,  most  learned, 
and  most  awkward  of  men.  He  was  then  only 
the  mildest  and  most  awkward  of  pupils.  In- 
stead of  resisting  and  defending  himself,  he 
wept  hot  tears.  The  more  he  wept,  the  more 
they  worried  him.  While  he  was  being  hustled, 
pushed,  and  beaten,  an  urchin  of  eleven  years, 
who  had  been  playing  in  the  gutter,  rushed 
into  the  thick  of  the  mob,  and  scattered  the 
band  of  persecutors  by  giving  the  ringleaders 
a  shower  of  blows.  Madame  Viguier  was 
informed  of  this  act  of  heroism  that  very 
evening.  She  learned  that  the  young  conqueror 
belonged  to  a  family  of  working  people,  that 
by  a  mere  chance  he  knew  how  to  read  and 
write,  and  that  he  was  wont  to  spend  the  live- 
long day  as  a  vagabond,  in  anticipation  of 
the  time  when  he  should  become  an  appren- 


His  Biography.  15 

tice.  She  declared  that  she  would  defray  the 
expenses  of  his  education.  He  entered  the 
Charlemagne  Lyceum,  and  advanced  with  giant 
strides,  doing  two  years'  work  in  one,  and  car- 
rying off  all  the  prizes  at  the  final  competitive 
examination.  Had  it  not  been  for  that  shower 
of  blo\vs  just  at  the  right  moment,  perhaps 
France  might  still  be  conning  the  amusing  and 
witty  philosophy  of  La  Romiguiere. 

M.  Vapereau  says  that  Cousin,  while  at 
school,  had  dreamed  of  some  day  becoming 
a  musician.  I  know  not  whence  this  informa- 
tion is  derived ;  I  leave  that  on  M.  Vapereau's 
conscience.  The  truth  is  that  Cousin  wrote, 
at  some  time  or  other,  the  libretto  of  an  opera 
called,  "  The  Three  Flagons,"  to  be  '  set  to 
music  by  Halevy.  The  score  was  never  com- 
posed, and  the  libretto  was  never  published. 
I  do  not  think  Cousin  ever  had  any  other  rela- 
tions with  music.  He  had  been  so  successful 
in  his  classes,  and  men  were  then  so  scarce, 
that  he  was  offered  a  place  as  auditor  of  the 
State  Council,  —  a  sure  road  to  fortune.  He 
preferred  to  enter  the  Normal  School,  which 
was  first  opened  in  1810,  at  the  very  time  when 
he  left  college.  He  is  said  to  have  held  the 
first  place  in  the  first  promotion.  It  should 
be  added  that  there  was  then  no  competitive 
examination  properly  so-called,  and  that  pupils 


1 6  Victor  Cousin. 

were  chosen  and  classified  by  the  Inspectors- 
General  as  they  went  their  rounds. 

Cousin's  novitiate  at  the  Normal  School 
lasted  two  years,  and  he  did  not  fail  to  shine 
among  the  foremost.  As  professors  of  rheto- 
ric at  the  Lyceum  he  had  had  M.  Victor  Le 
Clerc  and  M.  Villemain;  the  latter  he  still 
had  as  lecturer  at  the  Normal  School,  and  im- 
mediately after  finishing  his  course  of  study 
Cousin  was  asked  to  act  as  Villemain's  substi- 
tute in  the  chair  of  Greek  literature.  I  have 
it  from  himself  that  he  was  offered  the  chair 
of  philosophy  in  the  Communal  College  of 
Rome.  "  But  I  was  not  willing,"  he  added,  "  to 
leave  the  streets  of  Paris."  Behold  him,  then, 
installed  at  the  age  of  twenty  as  professor  of 
Greek ! 

There  had  been  some  thoughts  of  appoint- 
ing him  professor  of  philosophy,  a  fact  which 
clearly  indicates  the  status  of  philosophical 
instruction  at  that  epoch.  Not  only  could  he, 
at  that  early  age,  have  formed  no  doctrine 
of  his  own,  but  he  did  not  know,  even  by 
name,  the  doctrines  of  others.  He  had  picked 
up  at  most  only  a  few  cursory  lessons.  "  I 
took  my  course  in  philosophy  at  nineteen," 
he  said ;  that  is,  in  his  second  year  at  the  Nor- 
mal School.  There  were  no  courses  in  phi- 
losophy at  the  lyceums,  where  they  were  not 


His  Biography.  17 

introduced  until  required  by  the  regulation  of 
Sept.  19,  1809.  As  yet  there  was  but  one  aca- 
demic course  in  philosophy. 

In  the  preface  to  his  "  Fragments,"  written 
in  1833,  Cousin  gives  the  following  account 
of  his  call  to  philosophy:  "I  remember,  and 
shall  always  remember  with  grateful  emotion, 
the  day  in  1811  when  for  the  first  time  —  as 
a  pupil  in  the  Normal  School  preparing  for 
the  teaching  of  literature  —  I  heard  M.  La 
Romiguiere.  That  day  decided  my  whole 
life:  it  took  me  from  my  early  studies,  which 
promised  me  peaceful  successes,  to  plunge  me 
into  a  career  in  which  storms  and  disappoint- 
ments have  not  been  wanting.  I  am  no  Male- 
branche ;  but  I  felt  when  I  heard  M.  La  Ro- 
miguiere what  Malebranche  is  said  to  have 
felt  when  he  happened  to  open  a  treatise  by 
Descartes."  It  would  seem  that  in  discover- 
ing La  Romiguiere,  Cousin  at  the  same  time 
discovered  philosophy.  And  this  is  the  exact 
truth.  Philosophy  was  not  taught  in  the  ly- 
ceums ;  the  Faculties  had  just  been  established, 
—  or  re-established,  as  some  may  prefer  to 
say.  The  ideologists  and  the  whole  school  of 
Condillac  were  already  about  forgotten ;  they 
had  never  had  more  than  a  limited  public. 
Nothing  was  known  of  ancient  philosophy,  nor 
even  of  our  French  philosophers  before  Con- 

2 


1 8  Victor  Cousin. 

dillac.  The  name  and  existence  of  Kant  was 
not  learned  till  some  years  later.  M.  Royer- 
Collard,  formerly  clerk  of  the  Paris  Commune, 
ex-member  of  the  Council  of  Five  Hundred, 
a  lawyer,  and  in  no  wise  a  philosopher,  was 
appointed  professor  of  philosophy  in  1809. 
Now,  a  professor  of  philosophy  must  teach 
philosophy;  to  teach  it  he  must  know  it. 
M.  Royer-Collard,  being  ignorant  of  it,  walked 
the  quays  looking  for  an  instructor.  He  found 
one  in  a  book-stall.  An  odd  volume  of  Reid's 
"  Philosophical  Essays "  did  for  him  what 
Descartes  had  done  for  Malebranche,  and  what 
La  Romiguiere  was  doing  at  this  very  time  for 
Victor  Cousin.  France  was  in  very  great  need 
of  the  establishment  of  chairs  of  philosophy; 
she  belonged  in  advance  to  the  first  teacher 
who  offered,  but  a  teacher  she  must  have. 
Cousin  assures  us  that  the  Normal  School  was 
for  La  Romiguiere  in  1811,  and  for  Royer- 
Collard  in  1812.  It  is  easy  to  guess  who 
headed  the  school  toward  La  Romiguiere  the 
first  year,  and  toward  Royer-Collard  the  sec- 
ond. It  was  the  professor  of  Greek.  He 
already  had  the  power  of  making  proselytes 
which  distinguished  him  throughout  life. 

Cousin  was  acting  professor  of  Greek  during 
the  year  1812,  and  that  year  he  had  as  pupils 
M.  Paul  Dubois,  since  Director  of  the  Normal 


His  Biography.  19 

School,  and  M.  Viguier,  the  same  who  had 
been  the  occasion  of  the  first  battle  of  his  life. 
In  1813  Cousin  was  appointed  lecturer  in  phi- 
losophy. His  duty  consisted  in  attending  the 
lectures  of  the  Faculty  of  Letters  with  the 
students,  with  whom  he  afterward  discussed 
them.  Cousin  had  in  his  class  at  the  Nor- 
mal School  in  1813,  the  Abbe  Bautain  and 
Jouffroy;  in  1814,  Damiron.  Bautain,  Jouffroy, 
Damiron,  thenceforward  composed  his  little 
group  of  disciples.  They  were  as  much  school- 
fellows as  pupils. 

Jouffroy  having  ceased  to  believe  in  the 
authenticity  of  the  Catholic  religion,  and  yet 
wanting  to  believe  its  dogmas,  was  prepared 
to  receive  them  at  school  from  the  mouths  of 
philosophers,  no  longer  imposed  by  tradition 
but  demonstrated  by  reasoning.  When  they 
spoke  to  him"  only  of  the  origin  of  ideas,  he 
felt  greatly  defrauded.  He  was  not  then  able 
to  find  the  hidden  relations  that  connect  what 
are  apparently  the  most  lifeless  and  most  ab- 
stract philosophical  problems  with  the  most 
living  and  most  practical  questions.  He  com- 
plained bitterly  of  teaching  which  seemed  to 
make  a  point  of  avoiding  the  gravest  prob- 
lem, perhaps  the  only  one  of  any  importance : 
"  M.  de  La  Romiguiere  had  inherited  philoso- 
phy from  the  eighteenth  century  narrowed 


2O  Victor  Cousin. 

down  to  one  problem,  and  had  not  extended 
its  limits.  The  vigorous  mind  of  M.  Royer- 
Collard,  finding  this  problem,  had  plunged  into 
it  with  might  and  main,  and  had  not  had  time 
to  get  through  with  it.  M.  Cousin,  falling  into 
the  midst  of  the  fray,  at  once  attacked  the 
problem,  risking  that  he  would  find  its  solu- 
tion later  on.  The  philosophical  world  was 
in  a  hole,  where,  for  lack  of  air,  my  soul  was 
stifling;  and  yet  the  authority  of  the  mas- 
ters and  the  enthusiasm  of  their  disciples  so 
imposed  upon  me,  that  I  dared  not  show  either 
my  surprise  or  my  disappointment." 

Cousin,  having  seen  at  once  what  the  ques- 
tion of  the  origin  of  ideas  led  up  to,  was  filled 
with  enthusiasm.  That  his  was  a  soul  which 
only  sought  a  pretext  for  its  enthusiasm,  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  he  was  enthusiastic  for 
La  Romiguiere,  whose  lectures  were  no  more 
than  witty  and  attractive.  After  two  years  of 
teaching  at  the  Normal  School  he  was  already 
marked  out  for  the  career  of  public  instruction. 
Royer-Collard  chose  him  as  his  substitute  in 
1815  (Nov.  13,  1815). 

1815  !  To  this  date  must  be  assigned  the 
first  political  episode  in  Victor  Cousin's  life: 
he  enlisted  in  the  royal  volunteers.  This  was 
his  only  campaign ;  it  was  neither  brilliant,  nor 
bloody,  nor  even  fatiguing;  he  went  as  far  as 


His  Biography.  21 

Vincennes,  and  came  back  to  Paris  the  next 
day.  This  campaign  of  Vincennes  made  less 
noise  than  M.  Guizot's  trip  to  Ghent;  and  it 
must  be  admitted  that  it  was  of  less  im- 
portance. I  think  that  when  .the  country  is 
threatened  a  man's  proper  place  is  with  her 
defenders,  whatever  their  political  opinions ; 
but  I  also  remember  that  Cousin  was  only 
twenty-two  years  of  age ;  that  Napoleon's  des- 
potism, hard  enough  to  endure  in  France,  had 
become  visibly  odious  and  intolerable  to  the 
rest  of  Europe;  and  finally,  that  in  politics 
more  than  in  anything  else  we  must  pardon 
those  whose  intentions  are  upright.  Cousin's 
whole  life,  in  spite  of  appearances  to  the  con- 
trary, was  consistent  with  this  first  step. 

He  entered  upon  his  public  professorship 
after  a  very  insufficient  preparation,  since  it 
had  hardly  lasted  two  years.  I  must  say  at 
once  that,  besides  La  Romiguiere  and  Royer- 
Collard,  he  had  as  a  master  a  man  who, 
though  he  did  not  make  it  his  business  to 
teach  philosophy,  had  not  his  equal  in  France 
for  the  gift  of  observing  what  passes  within, 
and  for  delicacy  and  profundity  of  psycho- 
logical judgment;  this  was  Maine  de  Biran, 
the  only  one  of  Cousin's  masters  whom  I  have 
not  personally  known.  Cousin  learned  from 
La  Romiguiere  to  study  sensation,  from  Royer- 


22  Victor  Cousin. 

Collard  to  study  mind,  and  from  Maine  de 
Biran  to  study  will. 

The  lectures  of  the  first  year  (1815-1816) 
turned  almost  exclusively  on  Scotch  philoso- 
phy. M.  Cousin  was  sustained  in  his  instruc- 
tion by  the  three  teachers  above  mentioned ; 
but  his  mind  travelled  faster  than  theirs.  He 
rapidly  summed  up  their  work,  completed  it, 
and  passed  on.  Germany  attracted  him  as  a 
new  and  unknown  land  of  which  wonders  were 
related.  He  learned  German,  though  he  never 
knew  it  well,  and  began  with  infinite  pains  to 
decipher  Kant,  not  in  his  text,  but  in  the  bar- 
barous Latin  of  Born.  He  had  not  finished 
this  decipherment  when  he  announced  lectures 
on  Kant's  philosophy.  What  he  had  not  read, 
he  guessed  at.  As  at  the  end  of  1816  he 
had  left  behind  him  Royer-Collard  and  Maine 
de  Biran,  so  at  the  end  of  1817  he  thought 
that  he  had  passed  beyond  the  philosophy  of 
Kant ;  and  he  desired  to  go  and  study  on  the 
spot  the  new  German  philosophy,  the  phi- 
losophy of  Nature,  which  Schelling  had  just 
founded  on  the  ruins  of  Kant's  school.  Every- 
thing attracted  him  toward  this  new  master; 
it  even  seems  that  before  having  studied  this 
new  doctrine  he  felt  drawn  toward  it  by  the 
current  of  his  own  ideas. 

He    found    Germany   on   fire,   he   tells   us. 


His  Biography.  .  23 

Take  note  that  he  speaks  only  of  philoso- 
phers, and  of  the  quarrels  of  the  schools. 
On  the  one  side,  the  disciples  of  Kant  were 
filling  up  the  gaps  in  his  philosophy,  and  de- 
fending it  as  best  they  could  against  its  detrac- 
tors. On  the  other  side,  Jacobi's  school  was 
striving  to  raise  faith  above  reason,  making 
faith  depend  upon  enthusiasm.  Schelling's 
strength  lay  in  seeing  that  enthusiasm  be- 
longs to  reason  itself,  and  is  only  a  purer  and 
higher  application  of  reason.  On  "the  occa- 
sion of  this  visit  Cousin  did  not  see  Schelling, 
but  met  Hegel  instead,  at  Heidelberg,  without 
seeking  him  and  almost  by  chance. 

Hegel  was  as  yet  merely  a  distinguished  dis- 
ciple of  Schelling.  Germany  was  far  from 
foreseeing  that  he  was  to  be  the  Aristotle  of 
another  Plato.  Cousin  foresaw  this,  and  said 
to  his  friends  on  his  return  to  France,  "  I 
have  just  seen  a  man  of  genius."  Hegel  for 
his  part  appreciated  Cousin,  or  perhaps  felt 
grateful  for  an  admiration  to  which,  as  yet,  his 
own  countrymen  had  not  accustomed  him. 
From  this  year  (1817)  dates  a  friendship  which, 
though  lukewarm  at  intervals,  was  lasting. 
The  next  year  Cousin  pushed  on  as  far  as 
Munich,  where  he  passed  a  month  between 
Jacobi  and  Schelling.  He  is  a  great  admirer 
of  Sehelling,  but  we  see  that  his  heart  is  for 


24  Victor  Cousin. 

Hegel.  He  has  traced  a  parallel  between  the 
disciple  and  the  master  in  which,  in  spite  of 
his  secret  predilection,  he  does  justice  to  the 
founder  of  the  philosophy  of  Nature.  The 
master  was  gifted  with  a  powerful  invention, 
and  the  disciple  with  profound  reflection. 
Schelling  is  thought  in  its  development;  his 
language,  like  his  look,  is  full  of  life  and 
brightness;  he  is  naturally  eloquent.  Hegel 
lets  fall  at  rare  intervals  his  profound  and 
somewhat- enigmatical  words.  His  strong  but 
hampered  diction,  his  impassive  countenance, 
his  clouded  brow,  seem  the  very  image  of 
thought  turning  back  upon  itself.  "On  the 
whole,"  Cousin  added,  "he  was  not  especially 
amiable ;  but  I  liked  him  and  he  liked  me." 

It  may  readily  be  imagined  that  the  whole 
course  of  1818  was  full  of  this  philosophy  of 
which  Cousin  said :  "It  is  true;  it  is  the  true." 
Schelling  and  Hegel  led  him  to  Plotinus, — 
absolute  unity  perceived,  without  intermediary, 
by  pure  intelligence.  It  is  still  in  the  name 
of  this  doctrine  that  he  judges,  in  the  follow- 
ing years,  the  great  schools  of  ethics  and 
metaphysics  which  filled  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury :  the  school  of  Condillac,  —  which  is 
based  upon  Locke,  —  the  Scotch  school,  the 
German  school  of  Kant  and  Fichte.  He 
judges  them  with  independence,  because  he 


His  Biography.  25 

feels  or  fancies  himself  master  of  his  subject, 
and  makes  of  them  allies  to  the  philosophy 
of  Nature,  extended  and  completed.  Relying 
upon  a  psychological  analysis  which  gives  him 
a  foundation  that  he  deems  unassailable,  he 
separates  the  truth  from  the  error  in  each 
school,  and  then,  for  the  first  time,  gives  to 
his  method  a  name,  borrowed  from  the  Alex- 
andrians and  from  Leibnitz,  —  Eclecticism. 
This  name  has  since  become,  in  current  lan- 
guage, the  name  of  his  system  and  of  his 
school. 

The  year  1820  was  signalized  by  the  assassi- 
nation of  the  -Duke  de  Berry,  followed  by  a 
violent  reaction.  The  party  in  power,  stung 
to  frenzy,  decided  to  tamper  with  the  electoral 
law,  with  the  freedom  of  the  press,  and  even 
with  individual  liberty.  The  three  courses  of 
Guizot  Cousin,  and  Villemain,  attracting  con- 
siderable crowds,  in  which  students  predomi- 
nated but  towns-people  were  also  present,  were 
hot-beds  of  liberal  agitation  that  could  not  fail 
to  arouse  suspicion.  Here  freedom  was  prac- 
tised and  taught;  here  people  were  brought 
to  love  revolutionary  principles,  —  not  those, 
to  be  sure,  of  1793,  but  the  principles  of  1789, 
which,  as  having  thrown  down  all  barriers 
and  given  free  play  to  all  grudges,  the  party 
now  in  power  affected  to  confound  with  those 


26  Victor  Cousin. 

of  1793.  Villemain  found  indulgence  because 
of  certain  memories  of  1815,  and  because  his 
course  related  wholly  to  literature.  Guizot 
they  did  not  at  first  dare  to  touch,  since  he 
was  a  well-known  supporter  of  the  govern- 
ment, closely  connected  with  Royer-Collard, 
and  formerly  general  secretary  of  the  depart- 
ment of  justice.  Cousin  was  younger,  without 
high  family  connections,  and  he  was  only  a 
substitute.  Although  by  his  tastes  and  prin- 
ciples belonging,  after  all,  to  the  conservative 
camp,  he  liked  to  parade  his  liberalism,  which 
was  real;  he  did  not  avoid  religious  questions; 
he  had  uttered  intemperate  words  concerning 
the  Revolution,  —  a  sure  way  to  stir  and  cap- 
tivate the  liberal  youth ;  he  was  the  most 
brilliant  personification  of  the  young  Uni- 
versity and  of  the  Normal  School.  He  was 
silenced.  Two  years  later  the  increasing  re- 
action obliged  Guizot  to  leave  his  chair.  This 
was  a  great  political  event  and  occasioned  an 
extensive  schism  in  the  ranks  of  the  former 
liberal  Right  Guizot  and  Royer-Collard  went 
over  to  the  opposition,  while  De  Serre  joined 
Villele.  Of  the  great  Sorbonne  triumvirate 
only  Villemain  remained ;  but  Villemain  was 
warned  by  the  blows  that  fell  around  him, 
weakened  by  isolation,  and  had  never  had  much 
liking  for  martyrdom.  The  Normal  School 


His  Biography.  27 

was  suppressed.  Cousin,  who,  though  a  philo- 
sopher, was  perhaps  still  more  of  a  professor 
and  an  orator,  found  himself  checked  in  the 
midst  of  a  career  in  which  each  step  had  been 
marked  by  a  triumph.  All  at  once,  both  the 
Sorbonne  and  the  Normal  School  had  failed 
him;  it  seemed  that  his  livelihood  was  gone. 
Teaching  outside  of  public  schools  was  not  to 
be  thought  of,  as  there  was  no  such  teaching ; 
(nor  could  he  turn  to  the  newspapers,  which 
were  restricted,  fettered,  overrun  with  contrib- 
utors. He  had  not  the  brisk  manner  and  the 
light  touch  of  the  journalist.  He  wrote  as 
he  spoke, — slowly,  with  lucky  hits,  magnificent 
flights,  but  at  the  same  time  with  a  cer-. 
tain  seriousness  which  revealed  the  professor. 
Moreover,  journalism  was  not  to  his  taste; 
he  was  exclusively  devoted  to  general  ideas. 
What  was  he  to  do?  He  accepted  the  position 
of  tutor  to  the  Duke  of  Montebello's  son,  and 
gave  himself  up  with  ardor  to  works  of  philo- 
sophical erudition  more  profitable  to  others 
than  to  himself,  which  did  him  honor  without 
adding  to  his  fame  or  mitigating  his  honorable 
poverty.  During  the  eight  years  of  silence 
imposed  upon  him,  from  1820  to  1828,  he 
published  a  good  edition  of  Descartes,  an 
edition  of  Proclus,  and  the  first  volumes  of 
his  -translation  of  Plato,  which  he  considered 


28  Victor  Cousin. 

then,  and  ever  after,  as  his  chief  work.  In 
1824  he  was  asked  to  take  his  pupil  to  Ger- 
many. This  journey  served  his  purposes  ad- 
mirably, for  he  was  eager  to  revisit  Hegel,  to 
live  once  more  in  that  studious  atmosphere, 
with  its  discussions  and  ardent  investigations, 
to  find  himself  again  in  the  midst  of  that 
school  to  which,  since  1818,  he  had  not  ceased 
to  belong,  with  those  men  whom  he  had  called 
in  the  dedication  of  Proclus's  "  Commentary 
on  Parmenides,"  —  "  My  friends  and  teachers, 
the  chief  philosophers  of  our  century." 

This  was  Cousin's  third  visit  to  Germany, 
and  it  was  marked  by  an  entirely  unexpected 
adventure.  He  was  arrested  by  the  Prussian 
police,  who  accused  him  of  preaching  Carbona- 
rism,  and  even  suspected  that  he  had  come  to 
Germany  to  organize  a  plot  against  the  gov- 
ernment. They  gave  him  a  regular  trial,  but 
the  proceedings  were  secret,  and  not  even  the 
charges  were  shown  him.  He  remained  six 
months  in  prison,  and  it  is  likely  that  he  owed 
his  release  to  the  efforts  of  Hegel,  who  espoused 
his  cause  with  great  zeal  and  friendliness.  We 
may  imagine  what  torments  this  imprisonment 
in  a  foreign  land,  combined  with  the  uncer- 
tainty of  his  fate,  must  have  caused  to  a  man 
who  had  steadily  kept  out  of  political  turmoils, 
—  a  man  of  an  ardent  imagination,  an  imperious 


His  Biography.  29 

temper,  a  ceaseless  craving  for  movement  and 
expansion.  He  relates  that  he  had  to  put  up 
with  hard  fare ;  and  we  can  easily  believe  that 
no  one  fared  well  in  the  dungeons  of  Prussia  in 
1824.  He  complained  of  having  "  contracted 
varices  "  there.  I  do  not  doubt  that  he  thought 
all  was  over  with  him  until  the  time  when  Hegel 
came  to  offer  his  aid.  He  told  me  several  times, 
as  he  related  this  adventure  with  his  most  tragic 
air,  "  One  thing  alone  preoccupied  me,  —  the 
translation  of  Plato  was  not  finished !  "  He 
counted  life  as  nothing  compared  with  this. 
We  cannot  help  smiling  at  these  exaggerated 
fears,  and  yet  we  must  acknowledge  that  the 
mishap  was  a  cruel  one.  His  imprisonment 
lasted  six  months.  He  improved  the  time  by 
studying  German  and  by  reading  the  works  of 
Kant,  Fichte,  Jacobi,  Hegel.  He  had  a  great 
admiration  for  Goethe,  and  had  visited  him  at 
Weimar;  and  now,  merely  as  a  linguistic  exer- 
cise, turned  some  of  his  verses  into  French. 

When  it  was  known  in  France  that  this  pro- 
fessor, so  young  and  yet  so  famous,  the  centre 
of  so  much  admiration  and  sympathy,  whose 
popularity  had  very  naturally  been  increased 
by  his  dismissal,  was  persecuted  in  Prussia  for 
his  liberal  opinions,  there  was  an  explosion  of 
wrath  against  the  persecuting  government,  and 
of  enthusiasm  for  the  martyr.  This  enthusiasm 


30  Victor  Cousin. 

would  have  been  much  greater  if  people  had 
known  of  the  varices.  Upon  his  return  to 
France,  Cousin  simply  set  to  work  again  at  his 
translation  of  Plato,  and  did  not  triumph  over- 
much in  his  role  as  a  victim.  He  recalled  it  with 
suitable  moderation  when  M.  de  Martignac  re- 
stored him  to  his  chair  in  1828,  no  longer  as 
the  substitute  but  as  the  associate  of  M.  Royer- 
Collard :  "  I  cannot  but  feel  deep  emotion 
upon  my  reinstatement  in  this  chair,  to  which 
I  was  first  called  in  1815  as  the  choice  of  my 
illustrious  friend  and  teacher,  M.  Royer-Collard. 
My  removal  from  this  chair  was  one  of  the  first 
deeds  of  a  party  no  longer  in  power.  To-day, 
upon  the  revival  of  the  constitutional  hopes  of 
France  [applause],  I  return  to  this  place  with 
pride  and  rejoicing,  and  in  my  loyal  gratitude 
I  feel  the  need  of  publicly  thanking  my  coun- 
try's king  and  ministry.  .  .  .  As  I  look  about 
me,  I  shall  do  myself  the  justice  to  testify  that, 
amid  all  the  commotions  of  our  epoch,  amid 
the  various  chances  of  the  political  events  in 
which  I  might  have  taken  part,  my  wishes  have 
ever  been  bounded  by  these  walls.  Wholly  de- 
voted to  philosophy,  after  having  had  the  honor 
to  suffer  a  little  in  her  cause,  I  come  hither  to 
consecrate  to  her,  irrevocably  and  without  re- 
serve, all  that  remains  of  my  strength  and  of 
my  life." 


His  Biography.  31 

This  was  noble  language,  and  as  adroit  as  it 
was  noble.  He  declared  his  devotion  to  liberty 
before  an  audience  all  aglow  with  liberal  pas- 
sions ;  he  came  in  for  a  share  of  the  popularity 
—  the  immense  popularity —  of  the  new  minis- 
try; he  protested  his  disinterestedness;  he 
briefly  recalled  his  dismissal;  he  made  a  dis- 
creet allusion  to  the  Prussian  dungeons.  His 
mere  presence  in  that  chair  from  which  he  had 
been  banished  seven  years  before,  coupled  with 
the  return  of  M.  Guizot  at  the  same  time,  filled 
those  young  hearts  with  joy.  They  had  recov- 
ered their  master  and  idol,  all  the  greater  for 
the  persecution  he  had  suffered.  It  was  a  fine 
lesson,  and  the  enthusiasm  of  the  audienc^ 
knew  no  bounds.  Cousin  had  neither  Guizot's 
strength  nor  Villemain's  copiousness,  but  his 
age  (thirty-six  years)  made  him  nearer  to 
young  men ;  he  was  their  representative,  their 
leader,  their  inspirer.  He  was  known  to  be 
poor,  and  had  recently  been  a  sufferer.  He 
treated  of  all  the  great  questions  that  powerfully 
interest  men,  —  questions  then  more  than  ever 
the  order  of  the  day.  He  spoke  of  the  con- 
tinuity of  philosophy,  of  its  history,  and  of  his- 
tory in  general  He  remodelled  the  "Dis- 
course on  Universal  History  "  from  a  philoso- 
pher's stand-point,  basing  philosophy  upon 
psychology,  elucidating  the  development  of 


32  Victor  Cousin. 

mankind  by  describing  the  development  of  phil- 
osophic thought,  assigning  to  religion  and  phil- 
osophy their  separate  parts  in  attaining  a 
common  purpose,  restoring  to  man  the  direc- 
tion of  human  affairs  ascribed  by  Bossuet  to 
God  alone,  dazzling  minds  full  of  Napoleon's 
epic  story  by  the  theory  of  great  men.  Such 
were  the  lectures  of  the  first  year,  in  which 
Cousin  threw  light  upon  the  most  diverse  ques- 
tions, improvised  doctrines,  sketched  systems, 
more  than  once  pushed  his  boldness  to  rashness, 
overheated  the  passions  of  youth,  and  opened 
wide  outlooks  on  every  side.  The  next  year 
he  passed  with  long  strides  over  the  history  of 
the  schools ;  and  returning  to  Locke  after  hav- 
ing gone  back  as  far  as  the  Oriental  schools, 
he  gave  a  sound,  irrefutable,  and  —  by  a  climax 
of  art  —  attractive  refutation  of  eighteenth  cen- 
tury sensationalism.  It  was  at  this  point  that 
the  Revolution  of  1830  stopped  his  teaching, 
and  stopped  it  forever. 

Cousin  was  sincere  when,  upon  his  reinstate- 
ment in  his  chair  at  the  Sorbonne,  he  expressed 
his  gratitude  to  the  king  and  the  Martignac  min- 
istry. This  ministry  was  liberal,  in  the  sense 
that  it  was  unwilling  to  go  back  to  the  Old 
Regime  and  to  submit  to  the  clergy ;  but  it  was 
devoted  to  the  elder  branch  of  the  Bourbons 
and  professed  the  greatest  respect  for  religion, 


His  Biography.  33 

and  even  for  the  clergy  when  they  restricted 
themselves  to  the  sphere  of  their  religious  duties 
and  made  no  pretension  to  political  leadership. 
This  was  exactly  Cousin's  line  of  conduct.  He 
had  enlisted  in  1815  in  the  royal  volunteers. 
He  had  publicly  and  repeatedly  eulogized  the 
Charter;  and  he  renewed  his  eulogy  in  1826 
in  a  passage  of  his  "  Fragments  "  which  has  re- 
mained famous.  He  praises  the  Charter,  in 
this  passage,  not  only  for  the  liberalism  that  is 
in  it,  but  for  all  that  is  in  it.  He  regards  it  as 
well-nigh  the  acme  of  political  wisdom.  He 
does  not  find  fault  with  it  for  having  proclaimed 
a  State  religion ;  on  the  contrary,  "  It  neces- 
sarily required  this,"  —  a  somewhat  odd  say- 
ing for  a  philosopher.  To  express  his  posi- 
tion in  proper  names,  I  may  say  that  he  was 
a  liberal  of  Royer-Collard's  school  rather  than 
of  the  school  of  Thiers  or  Mignet.  He  said 
to  Thiers  and  Mignet,  "  You  will  ruin  us." 

He  was  not  one  of  those  who  were  on  the 
2/th  hostile  to  the  July  Revolution,  and  on  the 
29th  its  declared  partisans.  He  deplored  the 
victory,  as  he  had  deplored  the  conflict  He 
often  repeated  to  me,  after  he  had  heartily 
committed  himself  to  the  support  of  Louis 
Philippe's  government,  that  a  change  of  cabi- 
net would  have  been  enough;  that  the  Revolu- 
tion had  unsettled  monarchical  principles  with- 
3 


34  Victor  Cousin. 

out  any  advantage  to  liberty.  Like  the  Duke 
de  Broglie,  —  and  for  the  same  reasons,  —  he 
was  a  mere  spectator  of  the  struggle.  He  even 
went  into  the  "  Globe  "  office  to  express  his 
disapprobation.  Like  the  Duke  de  Broglie, 
again,  when  the  Revolution  became  a  settled 
fact,  while  regretting  it,  he  loyally  supported 
the  resulting  regime.  The  public,  and  the  new 
government  itself,  reckoned  him  among  the  vic- 
tors, and  gave  him  the  rewards  of  a  victory 
which  he  would  have  hindered  if  he  could. 

That  M.  Guizot  should  have  been  thrown 
into  opposition  in  1822  by  the  government's 
violent  acts,  surely  shows  how  hard  contempo- 
raries often  find  it  to  understand  one  another. 
Men's  minor  impulses  hide  from  others  their 
general  tendencies.  M.  Guizot  was  liberal,  to 
be  sure,  but  he  was  in  a  higher  degree  conser- 
vative. And  I  say  the  same  of  M.  Cousin. 
The  liberals  were  then  especially  interested  in 
the  war  which  the  clergy  was  waging  upon 
philosophy.  The  clergy  would  fain  control 
philosophy,  or  suppress  it.  M.  Cousin,  while 
granting  to  the  clergy  their  claim  to  a  State 
religion  and  the  advantages  which  the  Charter 
connected  therewith,  and  even  allowing  them  a 
very  large  share  in  the  direction  of  the  schools, 
and  wishing  bishops  to  sit  in  the  Chamber  of 
Peers,  nevertheless  maintained,  in  opposition  to 


His  Biography.  35 

the  Ultramontanes,  the  principles  of  individual 
liberty  and  the  independence  of  philosophy. 
Upon  these  two  points  he  would  not  yield,  and 
never  did  yield.  As  he  held  no  political  office 
under  the  Restoration,  it  was  not  perceived  — 
or  was  hardly  noticed  —  that  he  made  such 
concessions  to  the  Church ;  his  reservations  in 
favor  of  freedom,  on  the  other  hand,  were  very 
clearly  seen.  The  success  of  his  teaching  was 
the  success  of  the  liberal  party.  The  enemies 
of  that  party  felt  this,  and  therefore  they  struck 
him  down  in  1820.  The  friends  of  the  party 
also  felt  this,  as  they  proved  by  their  acclama- 
tions. First  by  his  dismissal,  and  then  by  his 
Prussian  imprisonment,  he  was  anointed  a  revo- 
lutionist in  spite  of  himself.  It  is  said  that  men 
always  end  by  having  the  opinions  which  they 
are  accused  of  having.  M.  Cousin,  though 
regarded  by  many  as  undecided  and  wavering 
in  his  opinions,  appears  to  me,  on  the  contrary, 
to  have  been  very  consistent  in  his  teaching 
and  very  straightforward  in  his  conduct.  Those 
who  assert  that  he  was  a  Jacobin  before  he  was 
a  ministerialist,  base  their  charge  upon  popular 
rumor.  It  has  no  other  foundation,  except, 
perchance,  some  of  those  inconsiderate  words 
that  will  escape  a  man  of  lively  imagination 
who  passes  his  life  in  writing  and  speaking. 
Yes,  Cousin  could  not  rid  his  heart  of  a  certain 


36  Victor  Cousin. 

tenderness  for  the  last  Brutus;  but  if  Cousin 
had  been  in  the  Roman  Senate,  and  Brutus 
had  there  been  arraigned  for  the  murder  of 
Caesar,  Cousin  would  have  condemned  his 
favorite  to  death. 

In  June,  1830,  he  was  only  associate  pro- 
fessor in  the  Literary  Faculty  at  Paris.  After 
July  he  was  full  professor,  member  of  the  Royal 
Council  of  Public  Instruction,  and  State  Coun- 
cillor Extraordinary.  He  was  in  the  same  year 
elected  a  member  of  the  French  Academy. 
Upon  the  organization  of  the  Academy  of 
Moral  and  Political  Sciences,  in  1832,  he  was 
appointed  to  be  one  of  its  first  members.  The 
same  year  he  was  called  to  the  peerage.  He 
was  Minister  of  Public  Instruction  in  M. 
Thiers's  cabinet  in  1840. 

It  is  needless  to  say  with  what  sentiments  he 
witnessed  the  approach  of  the  February  Revolu- 
tion. An  eye-witness  assures  me  that,  dressed 
as  a  peer,  he  followed  M.  Odilon  Barrot  as  far 
as  the  Tuileries.  The  costume  of  the  peer  is 
unlikely;  that  he  went  is  certain.  His  object, 
doubtless,  was  to  assure  the  king  of  his  fidelity, 
and  perhaps  to  give  his  support  to  his  friends, 
M.  Thiers,  M.  de  Remusat,  and  M.  Duvergier 
de  Hauranne,  who  at  one  time  thought  it  pos- 
sible to  form  a  ministry  with  the  aid  of  Odilon 
Barrot.  While  returning,  he  fell  in  with  a  band 


His  Biography.  37 

of  insurgents.  They  were  making  a  barricade, 
and  ordered  him  to  add  at  least  one  stone.  "  I 
cannot  do  it,"  said  he.  "  How  could  I?  The 
king  has  just  appointed  me  his  minister." 
These  words,  and  perhaps  the  peer's  robe,  — 
if  there  was  one,  —  raised  a  laugh.  Thus  ended 
his  Odyssey,  which  nevertheless  required  more 
courage  than  his  campaign  as  a  royal  volun- 
teer in  1815.  Then,  he  had  friends  and  opin- 
ions in  both  camps.  In  1848  he  sacrificed 
everything.  In  the  end  we  always  man  the 
brakes  of  revolution,  or  rather  in  the  end  we 
always  recover  from  the  shock ;  but  it  requires 
more  or  less  time  and  trouble.  The  brakes 
were  quickly  applied  in  1830.  The  Revolution 
of  1848  was  harder  to  manage.  It  carried  away 
not  a  dynasty,  but  monarchy  itself,  and  threat- 
ened the  whole  social  system  (Beware  of  the 
next!).  The  Royal  Council  being  dissolved, 
Cousin  retained  no  hold  on  the  University  ex- 
cept his  professorship  in  the  Literary  Faculty. 
This  he  resigned  after  the  usurpation  of  1851, 
—  retiring  on  the  7th  of  May,  1852.  They 
allowed  him  to  retain  his  lodgings  where 
Turgot  had  formerly  dwelt  as  Prior  of  the 
Sorbonne.  Thenceforward  his  sole  occupa- 
tion was  with  the  books  he  was  writing  and 
with  those  he  possessed.  He  died  at  Cannes 
on  the.i3th  of  January,  1867. 


CHAPTER  II. 

HIS     PHILOSOPHY. 

T)IERRE  LEROUX  wrote  a  pamphlet 
-I-  against  Cousin,  which  is  very  witty, 
highly  amusing,  and  supremely  unjust.  He 
charges  Cousin,  of  course,  with  being  an  eclec- 
tic ;  he  also  charges  him  with  not  being  one. 
"  Cousin,"  he  says,  "  declares  himself  an  eclec- 
tic, and  affirms  that  he  had  three  masters, — 
La  Romiguiere,  Royer-Collard,  and  Maine  de 
Biran.  He  borrowed  something  from  the  last 
two,  and  from  the  first  nothing  at  all.  What  be- 
comes then  of  the  famous  principle  that  every 
system  is  true  by  what  it  affirms,  and  false  by 
what  it  denies?"  Pierre  Leroux  is  quite  mis- 
taken. Cousin  borrowed  much  from  La  Romi- 
guiere :  in  the  first  place,  he  derived  from  him 
the  habit  of  psychological  observation ;  and  sec- 
ondly, he  learned  from  him  to  study  and  know 
the  phenomena  of  sensibility.  He  owes  to  him 
more  than  to  his  other  masters,  since  he  owes  to 
him  his  initiation,  his  method,  and  a  large  share 
of  the  facts  of  human  nature  on  which  he  bases 


His  Philosophy.  39 

his  system.  La  Romiguiere  taught  him  sen- 
sation, Royer-Collard  intellect,  and  Maine  de 
Biran  will.  Or  rather  they  opened  his  mind, 
furnished  suggestions.  It  was  his  personal  re- 
flection that  showed  him  man  first  awakened 
by  sensation,  applying  to  sensation  the  laws 
of  thought,  and  taking  voluntary  possession  of 
himself  to  judge  and  direct  his  own  acts. 

Pierre  Leroux  admits  elsewhere  that  man 
is,  according  to  Cousin,  made  up  of  sensation, 
intellect,  will.  But  these  are  three  men,  says 
Leroux,  —  three  men  studied  separately,  who 
would  also  live  separately,  if  in  this  isolation 
they  could  live.  It  would  be  difficult  to  mis- 
understand more  completely  the  doctrine  at- 
tacked. Cousin  repeats  incessantly  that  man 
is  entire  in  all  the  phenomena  of  which  he  is 
at  once  the  theatre,  the  cause,  and  the  spec- 
tator. Man's  reflection  may  be  more  or  less 
vigorous,  but  it  is  always  active ;  and  any  phe- 
nomena that  should  take  place  in  him  without 
finding  an  echo  in  his  consciousness  would  be 
as  if  they  were  not.  Every  analysis  makes 
a  distinction,  but  not  every  distinction  makes  a 
separation.  The  simultaneousness  of  our  im- 
pressions, acts,  and  apperceptions  is  one  of  the 
greatest  stumbling-blocks  in  psychology.  The 
observer  describes  his  sensation,  but  he  sees 
it  since  he  describes  it,  and  pays  attention  to 


40  Victor  Cousin. 

it  since  he  applies  his  method  to  it.  Cousin 
knows  and  says  all  this ;  after  his  analysis  he 
makes  a  synthesis.  When  he  has  separately 
shown  each  phase  of  the  phenomenon,  he 
shows  that  none  of  these  phases  would  be 
possible  in  such  isolation ;  and  thus,  after  hav- 
ing disjoined,  he  puts  together  again. 

What  one  might  perhaps  say  of  Cousin  is 
that,  though  he  was  a  sagacious  and  sometimes 
a  profound  observer,  he  was  not  a  patient  ob- 
server. He  well  understood  the  importance 
of  psychology,  he  made  it  the  basis  of  all  his 
philosophy;  but  he  did  not  pass  long  years, 
like  Jouffroy  and  Maine  de  Biran,  in  looking 
into  himself.  During  the  first  years  of  his 
teaching,  when  at  the  Normal  School,  he  did 
not  get  beyond  the  question  of  the  origin  of 
ideas,  —  a  psychological  question  if  ever  there 
was  one  ;  and  Jouffroy,  who  was  then  his  pupil, 
being  chiefly  interested  in  the  problem  of  hu- 
man destiny,  said  gloomily,  "  He  puts  philoso- 
phy into  a  hole."  Jouffroy  finally  got  used 
to  this  hole  and  remained  in  it,  while  Cousin 
at  a  single  bound  passed  over  the  Scotch 
school,  and  went  to  Germany  to  be  initiated 
into  the  philosophy  of  Nature. 

At  college,  Cousin  had  learned  the  Greek 
and  Latin  that  were  taught  there.  He  did  not 
learn  philosophy,  because  it  was  not  taught; 


His  Philosophy.  41 

and  for  the  same  reason  he  learned  neither 
English  nor  German.  A  few  people  in  France 
knew  English;  but  German  and  Germany 
were  completely  unknown.  Now,  it  was  im- 
possible for  Cousin  to  remain  in  such  igno- 
rance. He  was  professor  at  the  Sorbonne, 
not  of  philosophy  but  of  the  history  of  phi- 
losophy. He  had  read  Madame  de  Staei's 
"  Germany."  He  knew  that  Germany  had 
become  a  mighty  centre  of  ideas ;  if  he  did 
not  know  Kant's  doctrine,  he  at  least  knew 
the  noise  it  had  made  and  the  shock  it  had 
caused,  and  he  blushed  a  little  for  our  coun- 
try, and  a  great  deal  for  himself,  that  so 
important  a  movement  was  known  only  by 
hearsay.  Great  curiosity  and  a  proper  pride 
called  him  to  Germany.  He  began  by  learn- 
ing German,  — he  learned  it  poorly, — .and  by 
studying  Kant  in  the  barbarous  Latin  of  Born. 
This  made  up  the  very  scanty  outfit  with 
which,  in  1817,  he  presented  himself  beyond 
the  Rhine. 

Here  he  found  a  very  different  world  from 
that  of  our  peaceful  Sorbonne,  where  they 
were  still  trying  to  prove  that  there  is  nothing 
in  the  intellect  not  derived  from  the  senses, 
except  the  intellect  itself  Kant  had  been 
dead  for  thirteen  years;  but  he  had  disciples 
all  ovej  Germany,  and  even  philosophers  found- 


42  Victor  Coil  sin. 

ing  rival  schools  were  full  of  him.  All  were 
striving  to  find  a  proof  of  the  non-ego,  —  a 
problem  carrying  consternation  into  the  minds 
of  all  psychologists  and  leaving  the  rest  of 
the  world  in  perfect  calm.  Kant  thought  with 
Plato,  with  Aristotle,  with  Descartes,  with 
Leibnitz,  and  with  M.  Cousin,  that  reason  is 
not  an  outcome  of  sensation ;  but  that,  on  the 
other  hand,  reason  awakened  by  sensation 
forms  contingent  ideas,  regulates  them,  and 
links  them  together,  by  subordinating  them 
to  necessary  ideas.  Kant  studied  and  classi- 
fied these  necessary  ideas ;  and  the  more  he 
felt  their  necessity  the  more  difficult  it  ap- 
peared to  him  to  know  whether  this  necessity 
imposed  on  the  ego,  and  from  which  there  is 
no  escape,  settled  anything  beyond  the  being 
and  the  mode  of  existence  of  the  ego.  It 
is  not  impossible  that  we  are  so  made  as  to 
believe  in  the  existence  of  an  imaginary  non- 
ego.  Berkeley  had  set  up  this  hypothesis; 
then  it  had  occurred  to  him  that  we  have  no 
way  of  getting  out  of  the  ego  in  order  to  judge 
of  the  ego ;  that  consequently  the  non-ego  will 
never  be  more  than  a  probability.  According 
to  Berkeley,  it  is  ten  to  one  that  the  non-ego 
is  a  dream ;  but  what  matter,  said  he,  since 
the  dream  produces  on  us  the  same  effect  as 
reality?  Kant  was  not  so  easily  satisfied.  He 


His  Philosophy.  43 

wished  to  be  sure  of  his  ground,  and  had  found 
in  reasoning  from  experience  and  in  the  prin- 
ciples of  morality  means  of  reassuring  him- 
self that  did  not  appear  satisfactory  either  to 
Jacobi  or  to  Schelling. 

Cousin  returned  to  Germany  in  1818.  In 
1824  he  went  thither  for  a  third  visit,  and  this, 
as  we  have  seen,  cost  him  dear.  On  these 
visits  he  met  all  the  professors,  both  those 
who  remained  faithful  to  Kant's  solution  and 
those  who  were  blazing  a  new  route.  He  was 
everywhere  welcomed.  These  learned  men 
gave  a  hearty  reception  to  the  young  barba- 
rian who  came  to  them  in  quest  of  light.  He 
stayed  for  some  time  with  Jacobi,  who  charmed 
him  by  his  easy  intercourse  and  his  grace  of 
expression.  To  Hegel  he  became  peculiarly 
attached.  Unrebuffed  by  Hegel's  abrupt  ways 
and  his  somewhat  unsocial  character,  Cousin 
boasted  of  being  the  first  to  recognize  this 
philosopher's  genius  and  to  foresee  his  great 
future.  He  also  entered  into  continuous  rela- 
tions with  Schleiermacher,  who  was  before  all 
else  a  scholar,  though  the  scholar  was  com- 
bined in  him  with  the  philosopher  ;  while 
Cousin  himself,  by  virtue  of  his  eclectic  ten- 
dencies, was,  or  wished  to  be,  a  scholar.  He 
saturated  himself  with  German  thought,  and 
grew-  full  of  enthusiasm  for  German  habits 


44  Victor  Cousin. 

and  ideas,  and  for  the  distinctively  German 
problem,  —  the  famous  problem  of  Kant. 
Hegel,  not  being  versatile,  admired  the  ver- 
satility of  this  young  Frenchman,  who  when 
he  entered  Germany  was  but  a  disciple  of 
Reid  and  Dugald  Stewart,  and  who  now 
pretty  nearly  understood  Kant,  Fichte,  Jacobi, 
Schelling,  yes,  even  Hegel,  and  thought  him- 
self competent  to  pass  upon  them.  On  his 
return  to  Paris  Cousin  found  himself  a  differ- 
ent man.  Without  abandoning  the  Scotch 
school  and  Maine  de  Biran,  he  introduced  into 
his  teaching  all  the  ideas  astir  beyond  the 
Rhine,  even  adding  to  them  some  ideas  which 
he  regarded  as  his  own  discoveries,  and  which  — 
so  he  thought  —  must  settle  the  conquest  of 
the  non-ego  for  good  and  all. 

Among  these  ideas  of  his  own  the  imper- 
sonality of  the  human  reason  held  the  chief 
place.  To  succeed  in  establishing  this,  he 
first  passed  in  review  the  different  catego- 
ries of  reason,  reducing  them  to  two :  the 
principle  of  substance,  and  the  principle  of 
causality.  "  Reason  is  nothing  but  the  ac- 
tion of  the  two  great  laws  of  causality  and 
substance." 

When  I  apply  my  reason  to  one  of  the  acts 
of  my  understanding,  I  perceive  at  once  that  it 
is  impossible  to  conceive  a  phenomenon  with- 


His  Philosophy.  45 

out  placing  it  in  a  substance,  and  referring  it 
to  a  cause.  But,  says  Kant,  this  impossibility 
is  a  law  imposed  upon  my  understanding ;  the 
fact  that  I  am  so  made  does  not  prove  the 
external  existence  of  this  substance  and  this 
cause.  The  difficulty,  Cousin  replies,  is  that 
Kant  only  sees  the  principles  of  reason  in  their 
psychological  manifestation ;  he  sees  that  I  see 
them  and  that  I  cannot  help  seeing  them ;  he 
does  not  see  them  in  themselves,  apart  from  the 
understanding  they  illumine.  Kant  is  a  phi- 
losopher and  a  psychologist:  he  is  even  the 
greatest  of  psychologists;  he  reflects  deeply  on 
the  forms  of  his  thought,  and  discerns  all  its 
elements  and  all  its  shades.  He  forgets,  or 
does  not  recognize,  a  mental  condition  ante- 
rior to  reflection,  and  called  by  Cousin  spon- 
taneity, during  which  we  perceive  the  princi- 
ples of  reason  in  themselves,  not  as  necessary 
laws  of  our  thought,  but  as  absolute  truths 
subsisting  independently,  and  not  requiring 
to  be  conceived  in  order  to  exist  This 
spontaneous  perception  of  absolute  truths,  af- 
fording mankind  a  basis  for  faith,  enables 
philosophers  to  escape  the  clutches  of  Kant's 
scepticism. 

Doubtless  it  is  difficult  to  give  an  account  of 
spontaneity,  because  as  soon  as  it  is  studied  it 
disappears  and  makes  way  for  reflection.  But 


46  Victor  Cousin. 

spontaneity  evidently  always  exists  at  the  dawn 
of  intellectual  life;  it  is  reproduced  at  inter- 
vals throughout  life  after  man's  reflective  period 
begins,  and  the  philosopher  can  even  recover 
it  by  a  supreme  effort  resembling  those  flashes 
of  light  darting  at  moments  across  our  dark- 
ness, which  Aristotle  mentions  in  Book  XII.  of 
his  "  Metaphysics."  Through  spontaneity  the 
non-ego  ceases  to  appear  hypothetical,  and 
becomes  a  reality. 

"  Reason  is  somewhat  like  a  bridge  connect- 
ing psychology  and  ontology,  consciousness 
and  being;  it  rests  at  the  same  time  upon 
both ;  it  descends  from  God  and  condescends 
to  man ;  it  appears  to  consciousness  like  a  guest 
bringing  tidings  from  an  unknown  world,  and 
making  that  world  not  only  intelligible  but 
necessary." 

After  having  passed  through  reflection,  phi- 
losophy reverts  to  spontaneity,  and  throws  upon 
it  a  flood  of  light.  "  The  universal  harmony 
entering  the  mind  of  man  gives  it  breadth  and 
gives  it  peace.  The  divorce  of  ontology  from 
psychology,  of  speculation  from  observation,  of 
science  from  common  sense,  ceases  in  a  method 
coming  to  speculation  through  observation,  to 
ontology  through  psychology,  and  afterward 
confirming  observation  by  speculation,  psychol- 
ogy by  ontology.  This  method,  setting  out 


His  Philosophy.  47 

from  the  immediate  data  of  consciousness  upon 
which  the  common  sense  of  mankind  is  based, 
from  these  data  deduces  science,  which  really 
contains  nothing  more  than  common  sense 
raised  to  a  severer  and  purer  form,  and  inter- 
preted to  itself." 

Speaking  thus  to  the  general  public,  Cousin 
was  accused  of  being  obscure.  This  was  not 
his  fault,  but  the  fault  of  his  public  and  of  his 
situation.  He  was  clear,  extremely  clear  in- 
deed ;  but  it  was  the  metaphysician's  clearness, 
not  that  of  the  ordinary  writer.  The  splendor 
of  his  eloquence  attracted  the  crowd,  while  the 
thoughts  he  expressed  were  addressed  only  to 
a  chosen  few. 

Once  confident  of  the  existence  of  the  non- 
ego,  thanks  to  the  impersonality  of  the  reason, 
and  having  through  this  discovery  provided 
ontology  with  a  solid  basis,  the  next  thing  is 
to  organize  ontology  as  a  science,  and  first  to 
find  God.  We  shall  find  God  easily;  for  in 
order  to  make  His  existence  certain,  it  is 
enough  for  us  to  have  the  conception. 

God  is  in  every  intellectual  act.  Man  cannot 
think  without  thinking  of  the  ego,  nor  think  of 
the  ego  without  thinking  of  the  non-ego,  nor 
conceive  the  ego  and  the  non-ego  otherwise  than 
as  causes,  nor  conceive  these  causes  otherwise 
than  as  in  a  substance.  Now,  since  this  makes 


48  Victor  Cousin. 

two  causes  and  two  substances,  and  since  these 
causes  cannot  be  really  substantial,  —  both 
because  they  are  stripped  by  their  manifestly 
phenomenal  and  contingent  character  of  all 
that  is  absolute  and  substantial,  and  because, 
being  two,  they  are  mutually  limited  and  thus 
excluded  from  the  category  of  substance,  —  it 
follows  that  reason  must  refer  them  to  a  single 
substantial  cause  beyond  which  nothing  is  to  be 
sought  with  respect  to  existence ;  that  is,  with 
respect  to  cause  and  substance,  "  for  existence 
is  the  identity  of  the  two."  Thus  from  our 
earliest  intellectual  activity  we  are  in  posses- 
sion of  the  ego,  of  the  non-ego,  and  of  God. 
Cousin  expresses  this  by  the  following  formula : 
"  From  the  first  act  of  consciousness,  the  psy- 
chological unity  in  its  triplicity  is  met,  as  it 
were  face  to  face,  by  the  ontological  unity  in 
its  parallel  triplicity,"  —  which  is  the  finite,  the 
infinite,  and  their  relation. 

God  here  appears  as  substance  and  cause  of 
the  universe,  because  the  universe  cannot  exist 
except  in  a  substance  and  by  a  cause.  Can 
God,  on  the  other  hand,  exist  without  the  uni- 
verse? Is  the  infinite  conceivable  without  the 
finite;  the  cause  without  the  effect;  the  abso- 
lute cause  without  the  total  effect?  If,  to  sup- 
pose an  impossibility,  we  imagine  God  without 
the  universe,  it  is  a  God  who  can  be  a  cause 


His  Philosophy.  49 

and  is  not  so.  In  Him  as  in  the  universe  there 
is  a  state  of  becoming,  there  is  movement, 
variety,  a  before  and  an  after,  —  all  of  which 
are  ideas  irreconcilable  with  absolute  perfec- 
tion. "The  God  of  consciousness  is  not  an 
abstract  God,  a  solitary  king,  exiled  beyond 
creation  to  the  throne  of  a  silent  eternity  and 
of  an  absolute  existence  which  even  resembles 
the  annihilation  of  existence.  It  is  a  God  both 
true  and  real,  both  substance  and  cause,  always 
substance  and  always  cause,  being  cause  only 
inasmuch  as  He  is  substance,  and  substance 
only  inasmuch  as  He  is  cause, — that  is,  being 
an  absolute  cause.  He  is  one  and  several, 
eternity  and  time,  space  and  number,  essence 
and  life,  individuality  and  totality;  beginning, 
middle,  and  end ;  at  the  top  of  the  ladder  of 
existence  and  at  the  humblest  round ;  infinite 
and  finite  both  together ;  a  trinity,  in  fine,  being 
at  once  God,  nature,  and  humanity." 

This  statement  remains  famous  because  it 
has  resounded  in  many  a  discourse  directed 
against  eclecticism.  It  is  certainly  magnificent. 
All  of  Cousin's  doctrine  is  set  forth  in  a  grand 
style.  It  seems  obscure,  because  the  ideas  are 
new  and  abstract.  It  is  stately,  because  state- 
liness  is  in  harmony  with  the  majesty  of  the 
subject,  and  because  the  soul  is  moved  and 
elevated  in  presence  of  the  new  and  the  grand, 


50  Victor  Cousin. 

—  avia  Pieridum.1  The  enemies  of  M.  Cousin 
have  insisted  on  considering  this  as  pantheism, 
and  it  is  very  hard  to  prove  them  in  the  wrong. 
What  is  pantheism,  if  not  the  belief  in  the 
unity  of  the  substance  and  the  cause,  natura 
naturans  ?a  And  what  is  a  God  who  is  at  once 
God,  nature,  and  humanity,  if  not  the  very  God 
of  Spinoza?  It  is  Cousin  who  says  that  if 
God  is  not  all,  He  is  nothing;  hence  God  is 
all.  He  says  elsewhere  that  God  cannot  be, 
without  being  comprehensible,  nor  be  com- 
prehensible without  including  within  Himself, 
together  with  unity  and  immutability,  diversity 
and  movement, — that  is,  the  universe.  "  If  God 
is  in  Himself  absolutely  indivisible,  He  is  in- 
accessible and  consequently  incomprehensible, 
and  to  be  incomprehensible  is  not  to  be." 

Cousin  seems  later  on  to  have  returned  to 
the  incomprehensible  God  of  the  Christian 
Church,  to  the  absolute  unity  of  the  Alexan- 
drian and  Eleatic  schools,  to  the  doctrine  of 
creation,  and  even  to  that  of  creation  ex  nihilo? 
But  this  creation  does  not  establish  a  separa- 

1  "  Lone  by-ways  of  the  Muses,"  from  Lucretius  I.  926 : 

"  Avia  Pieridum  peragro  loca  nullius  ante 
Trita  solo." 

"  The  Muses'  by-ways  lone  I  traverse,  —  ways 
By  feet  unworn."  —  TR. 

2  "  Nature  producing  Nature."  8  From  nothing. 


His  Philosophy.  51 

tion  between  the  two  substances.  God  creates, 
and  creates  from  nothing,  says  Cousin,  as  I 
myself  create  my  own  acts,  which  are  created 
from  nothing,  since  they  are  the  product  of  my 
free-will.  This  comparison,  by  interpreting 
the  word  "  creation,"  destroys  it  The  universe, 
under  such  conditions,  is  distinct  from  God 
without  being  separate  from  Him ;  and  accord- 
ing to  this  system  the  freedom  of  my  acts, 
which  is  appealed  to,  only  exists  in  me  because 
of  my  imperfection.  If  God  could  not  forbear 
creating,  neither  could  He  create  otherwise. 

After  having  described  and  explained  man, 
Cousin  describes  and  explains  mankind ;  as  he 
has  related  man's  history,  he  relates  the  his- 
tory of  mankind.  He  finds  here  the  same 
laws  and  the  same  progress.  Just  as  he  passes, 
in  the  case  of  man,  from  psychology  to  on- 
tology, so  he  begins  the  history  of  mankind  by 
the  history  of  thought,  that  is,  by  the  history 
of  science.  The  divine  science,  which  is  the 
word,  or  \ojo^t  adequate  to  perfection  and  per- 
fect as  well,  embraces  the  whole  of  being  and 
the  whole  of  science ;  while  human  science,  as- 
piring toward  divine  science  and  reaching 
toward  it  ceaselessly  by  its  efforts  and  its 
development,  is  progressive  instead  of  being 
perfect.  It  is  in  a  state  of  flux,  like  all  that  is 
finite ;  it  streams  up  from  the  deeps  to  reach 


52  Victor  Cousin. 

the  heights.  It  first  applies  itself  to  sensa- 
tion; then,  gaining  strength,  it  studies  reason 
and  passes  from  sensationalism  to  idealism. 
Now  it  is  that  formidable  problems  crowd  be- 
fore the  intelligence,  and  it  becomes  a  prey  to 
doubt.  It  doubts  reason,  not  only  on  account 
of  the  apparent  contradictions  of  reason,  but 
even  because  of  its  character  of  necessity,  its 
subjectivity.  But  as  science  cannot  consist  in 
doubt,  it  escapes  from  doubt  by  spontaneous 
insight  into  truth,  whether  this  insight  comes 
from  religion,  from  poetry  (the  same  thing), 
or  whether  it  comes  from  philosophy,  which 
has  reached  its  most  perfect  form  by  the  lapse 
of  personality.  Such  are  the  four  great  sys- 
tems that  make  up  the  history  of  human 
thought:  sensationalism,  idealism,  scepticism, 
and  mysticism. 

These  systems  also  fill  the  history  of  society. 
Society  begins  with  simple  faith;  it  passes 
through  the  epochs  of  analysis  and  discussion, 
—  epochs  terminating  in  criticism  and  nega- 
tion, —  and  it  takes  refuge  at  last  in  the  affirma- 
tion of  a  higher  faith.  The  most  perfect  form 
of  philosophy,  as  of  society,  results  from  blend- 
ing in  a  final  synthesis  all  the  elements  of 
former  periods.  A  man  arises  who,  as  writer, 
general,  or  legislator,  exerts  enough  sway  over 
mankind  to  induce  men  to  advance  from  de- 


His  Philosophy.  53 

cadence  to  renaissance,  from  renaissance  to 
criticism,  and  from  criticism  to  full  self-pos- 
session. The  part  which  great  men  play  is 
providential ;  by  them  God  fulfils  His  designs. 
The  token  of  genius  is  success.  Mankind  is 
at  first  simple,  because  it  is  near  Nature;  it 
becomes  complex  when  the  progress  of  civili- 
zation and  reason  causes  progress  in  the  sci- 
ences and  arts.  Philosophical  analysis,  by 
generalizing  knowledge,  setting  up  democ- 
racy, pulling  down  barriers,  overcoming  pre- 
judices, and  reckoning  among  prejudices 
religions  and  traditions,  replaces  the  creative 
period  by  the  period  of  scholarship.  Progress 
then  consists  in  the  revival  and  co-ordination 
of  differences. 

Thus  dawns  the  era  of  constitutional  govern- 
ments. Napoleon,  suppressing  individual  ini- 
tiative, formed  but  a  factitious  unity;  the 
Charter  established  the  true  unity  by  recog- 
nizing and  sanctioning  differences,  by  subor- 
dinating them  to  justice,  and  by  finding  a, 
place  for  them  in  a  wise  and  beneficent  hier- 
archy. The  Restoration  made  the  mistake  of 
replacing  this  hierarchy  of  rights  by  the  re- 
newal of  privileges,  and  rendered  the  Revolu- 
tion of  July  almost  inevitable.  The  victors  of 
July  in  their  turn  did  wrong  to  bring  about  a 
revolution  instead  of  a  simple  evolution.  The 


54  Victor  Cousin. 

elder  line  should  have  been  preserved,  but 
subjected  to  the  salutary  yoke  of  justice.  The 
Charter  was  impaired  after  1830,  inasmuch  as 
the  transmission  of  the  royal  power  became 
less  certain ;  it  was  improved,  in  so  far  as 
equality  amid  diversity  received  a  more  effec- 
tive sanction.  It  is  the  duty  of  good  citizens 
and  of  philosophers  to  adhere  to  a  form  of 
government  which,  by  giving  a  firm  basis  to 
order  and  liberty,  renders  the  triumph  of 
reason  definitive. 

Such,  as  a  whole,  is  the  philosophy  of  M. 
Cousin.  Taking  psychology  as  his  starting- 
point,  and  eclecticism  as  his  method,  his  doc- 
trines are —  the  reduction  of  the  categories  of 
reason  to  the  two  principles  of  substance  and 
causality;  the  existence  of  the  non-ego  based 
upon  the  impersonality  of  reason ;  a  God, 
free,  intelligent,  personal,  who  is  a  necessary 
cause,  and  necessarily  a  cause;  a  system  of 
morality,  having  freedom  as  its  condition,  duty 
as  its  rule,  the  immortality  of  the  soul  as  its 
sanction;  for  a  philosophy  of  the  history  of 
philosophy,  the  constant  and  regular  succes- 
sion of  the  four  primordial  systems ;  for  a 
philosophy  of  the  history  of  mankind,  the  glo- 
rification of  success ;  for  a  political  system,  — 
instead  of  that  variety  without  unity  which  is 
anarchy,  or  that  unity  without  variety  which 


His  Philosophy.  55 

is    despotism,  —  unity  amid  variety,    that  is, 
society  organized  upon  the  plan  of  Nature. 

This  system  is  all-embracing.  It  traverses 
the  whole  cycle  of  philosophy,  from  meta- 
physics to  politics.  It  solves  all  the  problems 
that  divided  men's  minds  at  the  beginning  of 
this  century.  It  refutes  Locke's  doctrine,  which 
had  been  restored  to  honor,  though  with  im- 
portant modifications,  by  Condillac  and  the 
ideologists.  It  solves,  or  professes  to  solve, 
the  great  problem  Kant  had  set  for  psycholo- 
gists and  metaphysicians.  It  pronounces  upon 
the  relations  of  God  to  the  universe,  upon  the 
law  of  human  existence,  and  upon  the  law  of 
human  society.  As  it  stirs  all  questions,  so  it 
interrogates  all  schools, —  the  contemporary 
French  schools^the  Scotch  school,  the  Ger- 
man schools,  the  French  and  other  schools  of 
the  eighteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  the 
mediaeval  schools,  the  school  of  Alexandria 
(very  closely),  the  Greek  schools,  the  Oriental 
philosophy.  Maintaining  that  in  point  of  doc- 
trine each  system  is  true  by  what  it  affirms 
and  false  by  what  it  denies ;  that  every  system 
contains  a  part  of  the  truth ;  that  all  systems 
taken  together  contain  the  whole  truth;  that 
there  is  no  more  need  to  discover  truth,  but 
only  to  unite  its  scattered  fragments,  Cousin 
also  holds  that  in  matters  of  politics  there  is 


56  Victor  Cousin. 

in  every  form  of  government  some  justice, 
which  becomes  alloyed  with  injustice  whenever 
one  of  the  complex  elements  composing  so- 
ciety is  forgotten,  sacrificed,  or  given  a  position 
not  assigned  to  it  by  Nature.  From  one  form 
must  be  taken  the  principles  of  stability,  per- 
petuity, authority ;  from  another,  the  principle 
of  progress.  We  must  sanction  an  aristocracy, 
— which  is  legitimate  under  certain  conditions, 
and,  moreover,  necessary  to  the  effectual  work- 
ing of  authority.  To  democracy,  we  must 
grant  equality  before  the  law,  — the  right  and 
the  means  of  rising  by  dint  of  capacity  and 
labor.  In  short,  we  must  form  a  government 
uniting  into  one  happy  family  forms  of  gov- 
ernment that  have  long  been  deemed  hostile. 
This  system,  by  which  all  questions  are  solved 
according  to  the  same  principles  and  the  same 
method,  is  eclecticism.  It  is  altogether  a  mis- 
take to  say  that  M.  Cousin  has  given  us  only 
fragments  of  a  system,  and  fragments  often 
contradictory ;  there  are  few  systems  so  com- 
plete, embracing  so  many  details,  and  reducing 
them  so  easily  and  so  faithfully  to  a  single 
principle.  I  do  justice  to  the  beauty,  the 
scope,  and  the  symmetry  of  the  system,  while 
at  the  same  time  I  believe  that  a  great  many 
of  the  propositions  making  up  this  philosophy 
are  false  or  questionable. 


His  Philosophy.  57 

I  quite  agree  with  M.  Cousin  in  his  refu- 
tation of  Locke.  When  this  refutation  was 
made,  Locke  was  a  power  among  us.  Cousin 
does  justice  to  him,  and  executes  justice  upon 
him.  The  Locke  he  describes  is  the  genuine 
Locke,  —  that  moderate  sage  of  upright  inten- 
tions and  benevolent  doctrine,  that  sagacious, 
laborious  observer,  to  all  prejudice  a  stranger, 
neither  seeking  nor  shunning  novelty,  loyal  to 
good  sense  in  its  true  and  useful  features,  and 
even  in  its  superficial  and  vulgar  ones,  resem- 
bling those  mighty  philosophers  described  by 
Joseph  de  Maistre,  who  are  afraid  of  spirits, 
and  who  esteem  themselves  eminently  practi- 
cal because  they  never  see  more  than  half 
of  the  reality.  M.  Royer-Collard  had  urged 
the  claims  of  reason  with  authority;  Victor 
Cousin  now  urged  these  claims  with  splen- 
dor; and  the  refutation  of  Locke,  which  from 
any  other  lips  would  have  seemed  dry,  was 
from  his  lips  irresistibly  winning. 

When  Cousin  reduced  the  principles  of  the 
reason  to  two,  and  preserved  as  irreducible 
only  causality  and  substance,  he  thought  that 
he  had  made  a  great  advance  in  psychology. 
I  think  with  him  that  the  senses  do  not  give 
us  the  idea  of  cause ;  they  give  us  only  phe- 
nomena. Consciousness  may  give  us  the  idea 
of  cause,  together  with  the  succession  of  psy- 


58  Victor  Cousin. 

chological  phenomena;  but  it  does  not  give 
us  the  conception  that  no  phenomenon  can 
be  produced  except  by  a  cause  and  in  a  sub- 
stance, for  there  is  nothing  either  in  conscious- 
ness or  in  the  senses  that  expressly  or  virtually 
involves  necessity.  I  inquire  of  M.  Cousin 
whether  the  same  thing  does  not  hold  true  of 
the  just  and  of  the  beautiful? 

The  senses  and  the  consciousness  give  me 
nothing  but  pleasure  and  pain.  They  can 
never  suggest  to  me  the  conception  of  sacri- 
fice. They  can  never  prove  to  me  its  neces- 
sity, because  nothing  necessary  follows  from 
their  operations.  By  collating  certain  obser- 
vations we  can  form  a  general  law,  but  a  law 
so  formed  is  only  a  summary,  a  total ;  it  is 
not  a  rule.  The  voice  commanding  me  in 
certain  cases  to  prefer  pain  to  pleasure,  to 
sacrifice  my  interest  and  even  my  life  to  the 
general  interest,  is  an  inner  voice  resounding 
in  the  depths  of  my  reason,  and  speaking  a 
different  language  from  that  of  the  world.  I 
learned  in  M.  Cousin's  school  that  freedom  as 
soon  as  exercised  must  submit  to  the  yoke  of 
duty;  and  that  duty  cannot  be  inferred  from 
freedom,  because  duty  is  the  sovereign  master. 
How  can  this  principle  of  the  good,  which 
comes  to  me  from  reason  alone,  be  derived 
from  the  principle  of  causality  or  from  the 


His  Philosophy.  59 

principle  of  substances,  if  not  for  this  meta- 
physical reason  that  an  idea  necessarily  in- 
heres in  a  substance,  and  the  eternal  idea  in 
the  eternal  substance?  Grant  that  it  is  in- 
herent in  substance,  —  still  the  idea  I  have  of 
it  is  an  idea  absolutely  different  from  the  idea 
I  have  of  substance.  It  is  quite  as  different 
from  the  idea  I  have  of  cause,  though  I  may 
be  led  by  a  series  of  philosophical  specula- 
tions to  think  that  there  is  no  other  reality, 
and  consequently  no  other  production  or  cause, 
beside  what  is  classed  with  the  good.  Even 
this  speculation,  by  which  the  idea  of  the  good 
would  be  reduced  to  the  idea  of  cause,  pro- 
ceeds from  the  idea  of  the  good,  and  results 
from  the  more  and  more  vivid  and  precise 
apperception  of  it  formed  by  reflection.  I 
say  as  much  for  the  idea  of  the  beautiful, 
which  is  not  identical  with  the  feeling  of  the 
present  and  the  agreeable.  It  is  not  by  re- 
peatedly experiencing  sensations  that  I  train 
my  senses ;  it  is  by  the  conception  of  an  ideal 
independent  of  me  and  of  every  human  intel- 
ligence, —  an  ideal  better  understood  as  man- 
kind is  elevated  and  purified,  but  one  which 
mankind  can  neither  originate  nor  change. 

M.  Cousin  naturally  attached  great  impor- 
tance to  the  solution  which  he  believed  that 
he  had  found  to  Kant's  famous  problem.  He 


6o  Victor  Cousin. 

had  rightly  distinguished  two  stages  in  psy- 
chological phenomena :  the  spontaneous  stage 
and  the  reflective  stage.  The  phenomenon 
first  occurs  in  the  spontaneous  stage,  —  that 
is,  we  see  that  it  occurs  but  as  if  without  heed- 
ing it,  — and  straightway,  by  a  natural  reaction 
requiring  no  effort  of  will  on  our  part,  we  take 
a  more  complete  possession  of  it.  What  ren- 
ders this  analysis  of  the  two  successive  stages 
of  the  soul  difficult,  is  that  the  attention  is  not 
completely  absent,  even  from  phenomena  to 
which  we  pay  no  heed.  If  the  soul  did  not 
perceive  them  at  all,  they  would  be  to  the  soul 
absolutely  as  if  they  were  not.  In  the  spon- 
taneous stage  the  soul  has  a  confused  concep- 
tion of  them,  and  in  the  reflective  stage  a 
precise  conception.  It  is  only  a  difference  of 
degree,  —  a  shade  of  difference  rather  than 
a  difference.  To  make  myself  understood  I 
shall  have  recourse  to  extreme  cases.  Some- 
times it  happens  that  a  word  is  addressed  to 
us  which  we  do  not  hear.  The  speaker  has 
closed  his  lips  when  we  perceive  what  he  said. 
Between  the  sensation  produced  by  the  spoken 
word,  and  our  cognizance  of  the  existence  of 
this  sensation  within  us,  an  interval  has  oc- 
curred. The  fact  that  this  cognizance  has 
followed  the  modification  of  our  sensibility, 
which  is  its  object,  only  after  an  interval,  is 


His  Philosophy.  61 

not  the  result  of  our  will,  since  our  will  could 
not  be  stimulated  by  a  phenomenon  that,  to 
our  consciousness,  did  not  exist.  It  is  mani- 
fest from  this  example  that  a  sensation  and  an 
idea  may  be  produced  in  us  spontaneously. 
Suppose  that  at  the  very  same  moment  our 
attention  be  called  away  to  something  else; 
this  purely  spontaneous  idea  will  have  passed 
through  the  mind  like  a  dream,  and  generally 
without  leaving  any  trace  in  our  memory. 
The  case  most  opposite  to  this  results  from 
methodical  observation.  In  this  case,  we  not 
only  pay  attention  to  an  impression  because 
it  is  a  deep  one  and  excites  in  us  the  will  to 
insist  upon  it  and  understand  it,  but  we  also 
resolve  to  know  its  nature  and  character  scien- 
tifically. To  this  end  we  retain  it,  reproduce 
it,  modify  it,  while  seeking  its  origin,  noting 
its  variations,  and  comparing  its  different  as- 
pects. The  spontaneous  act  and  the  reflective 
act  are  two  very  different  things.  The  interval 
between  them  can  easily  be  filled  up  by  re- 
flection. This  distinction  is  an  ingenious  one, 
and  interesting  psychological  inferences  may 
be  drawn  from  it ;  yet  it  seems  that  properly 
speaking  we  have  not  two  different  states  of 
mind  to  deal  with,  but  merely  two  different 
degrees  of  the  same  state;  for,  even  in  the 
spontaneous  state,  the  mind  is  attentive,  al- 


62  Victor  Cousin. 

though  its  attention  is  distracted.  Reflection 
is,  as  it  were,  only  redoubled  attention.  If, 
therefore,  I  am  not  mistaken  in  this,  if  an 
impression  not  perceived  is  really  no  impres- 
sion at  all,  it  follows  that  duality  exists  in  every 
psychological  impression;  and  if  duality  ex- 
ists, the  problem  also  exists,  and  is  as  difficult 
of  solution  for  the  spontaneous  state  as  for 
the  reflective  state. 

What  I  have  just  said,  referring  especially 
to  sensible  impressions,  is  not  less  true  of 
rational  ideas.  Certain  ideas  are  presented  to 
us  by  the  natural  force  of  the  reason,  —  this  is 
the  teaching  of  all  rationalistic  philosophers,  — 
and  they  can  only  be  presented  and  become 
manifest  to  us  through  the  medium  of  a  phe- 
nomenon. In  other  words,  without  reason 
they  would  not  exist;  without  the  phenome- 
non they  would  not  be  perceived.  This  is  pre- 
cisely M.  Cousin's  teaching.  Reason  is  the 
faculty  of  the  infinite,  as  the  senses  and  con- 
sciousness are  the  faculties  of  the  finite;  but 
the  senses  and  consciousness  cannot  produce 
an  idea  without  the  reason,  and  reason  cannot 
perceive  the  ideas  inherent  in  itself  without 
the  discursive  faculties.  The  whole  man  is 
in  each  phenomenon  of  man,  in  sensation, 
in  intelligence,  in  will;  and  the  whole  intel- 
ligence is  in  each  intellectual  phenomenon, 


His  Philosophy.  63 

in  the  senses,  in  the  consciousness,  in  the  rea- 
son, —  in  the  finite,  in  the  infinite,  and  in  their 
relation.  Cousin  sees  clearly  man's  unity,  and 
proclaims  it  loudly;  but  he  sees  also  the  va- 
riety of  his  powers,  and  takes  equal  care  to 
establish  this.  In  psychology,  in  metaphys- 
ics, in  history,  in  politics,  his  constant  study 
is  to  discover  unity  in  variety,  and  variety  in 
unity;  to  distinguish,  to  analyze,  but  not  to 
separate;  to  examine  one  after  another  the 
different  elements  of  life,  while  insisting  upon 
this  main  point:  that  all  these  elements  co- 
exist and  co-operate  in  life  and  in  each  phe- 
nomenon of  life,  and  that  life  is  nothing  more 
than  the  simultaneous  development  of  all  the 
powers  that  constitute  our  being.  If  this  is  his 
doctrine,  —  and  the  fact  cannot  be  disputed, 
—  how  can  he  talk  to  us  of  an  expiring  con- 
sciousness, and  of  a  reason  embracing  eternal 
verities  without  any  intervention  of  the  ego 
and  of  the  consciousness?  While  using  such 
language  he  is  no  longer  of  Descartes'  school, 
he  is  the  disciple  of  Proclus ;  he  no  longer 
speaks  as  a  rationalist,  but  as  a  mystic.  He 
puts  a  word  in  the  place  of  an  idea.  When 
consciousness  expires,  the  man  expires.  Only 
of  God's  thought  was  it  possible  to  say  that 
*'  thought  is  the  thought  of  thought,"  because 
thinking  itself,  and  thinking  only  itself,  it  has 


64  Victor  Cousin. 

no  object  distinct  from  itself.  Yet  the  Alex- 
andrians, coming  after  Aristotle,  gave  thought 
the  second  place  in  the  divine  Trinity,  inas- 
much as  there  is  a  subject  and  an  object  in 
every  intellectual  act,  even  when  the  subject 
thinking  and  the  object  thought  are  one  and 
the  same  infinite  Being.  I  say  that  the  ex- 
piration of  consciousness  is  the  expiration  of 
knowledge.  Whether  this  spontaneous  intui- 
tion precede  reflection,  —  as  it  really  does,  — 
or  whether  it  be  produced  after  reflection,  by 
a  sort  of  inspiration  like  the  ei/wo-t?1  of  the 
Alexandrians,  Cousin  cannot  appeal  to  it.  He 
cannot  appeal  to  it  in  the  former  case,  for 
that  would  be  to  subordinate  philosophy  to 
ignorance ;  nor  in  the  latter,  for  that  would  be 
to  suppress  reason  in  support  of  mysticism. 
His  solution  is  but  an  illusion.  By  affirming 
that  every  thought  contains  the  inseparable 
apperception  of  the  ego  and  the  non-ego,  and 
that  the  apperception  of  every  internal  or  ex- 
ternal phenomenon  supposes  the  simultaneous 
affirmation  of  a  substance  containing  and  pro- 
ducing the  phenomenon,  Cousin  only  avoids 
the  difficulty  of  passing  from  the  ego  to  the 
non-ego,  —  and  that  of  the  creation  of  the  finite 
by  the  infinite,  —  by  substituting  therefor  the 
greater  difficulty  of  the  confusion  of  the  ego 
1  Union,  oneness,  unification. 


His  Philosophy.  65 

and  the  non-ego,  of  the  finite  and  the  infinite, 
in  the  unity  of  substance  and  cause. 

In  truth,  philosophy  ascertains,  describes, 
analyzes,  rather  than  explains.  It  refers  a 
phenomenon  to  its  cause ;  this  is  not  a  com- 
plete explanation,  it  is  only  the  beginning  of 
an  explanation,  but  this  is  all  that  philosophy 
can  give.  In  no  case  can  philosophy  answer 
the  question  "  How?"  I  am  certain  that  the 
universe,  being  finite,  does  not  exist  of  itself, 
and  that  it  exists  by  the  working  of  the  in- 
finite. But  as  to  how  the  infinite  produces 
the  finite,  I  am  ignorant.  I  must  begin  in 
every  case  by  an  act  of  faith,  or  else  take  ref- 
uge in  scepticism.  I  have  no  other  answer 
to  Kant's  problem,  and  to  the  one  formulated 
by  Cousin  with  regard  to  creation, — as  we 
shall  presently  see,  —  except  Galileo's  answer : 
"  The  world  revolves  !  " 

While  philosophers  were  striving  to  redis- 
cover the  universe  that  Kant  had  taken  from 
them,  many  earnest  souls  who  had  no  doubt 
about  the  existence  of  the  universe,  had  much 
doubt  about  the  existence  of  God.  For  some 
years  France  had  been  either  without  religion, 
or  with  only  a  clandestine  one,  and  had  been 
destitute  of  schools.  The  enlightened  classes 
had  learned  from  Rousseau,  from  Bernardin 
de  Saint-Pierre  (and  from  Robespierre  ?)  a  nat- 
5 


66  Victor  Cousin. 

ural  religion,  which  at  bottom  was  but  Chris- 
tianity minus  its  mysteries  and  its  revela- 
tion. Christianity  was  to  them  a  sentiment 
rather  than  a  belief;  the  shrewdest  politicians 
accepted  it  as  an  instrument,  as  a  social  ne- 
cessity. The  Catholic  religion  itself  was  no 
more  than  that  to  the  First  Consul  when 
he  re-established  it.  This  restoration  of  the 
Church  in  1802  appeared  to  many  of  his 
partisans,  and  even  to  many  of  his  courtiers, 
a  piece  of  hypocrisy,  and  the  beginning  of  a 
return  to  the  Old  Regime.  Atheism  based 
on  reflection  was  taught  by  several  ideolo- 
gists ;  atheism  due  to  indifference  was  wide- 
spread in  the  middle  classes  and  in  the  army. 
It  was  the  young  men,  rather  than  men  of 
mature  years,  who  felt  agitated  by  the  desire 
to  believe,  or  at  least  to  understand.  The 
Imperial  University,  by  virtue  of  its  consti- 
tution, accepted  the  Catholic  doctrine  as  the 
basis  of  its  instruction.  All  those  who  were 
born  with  the  century  learned  these  doctrines 
at  school  or  at  college.  When  they  went 
home  again,  they  almost  invariably  found  a 
father  professing  either  atheism  or  indiffer- 
ence ;  hence  arose  in  these  young  souls  the 
uneasiness  of  which  I  have  just  spoken. 
Even  politics  was  involved ;  for  all  royalists 
were  believers,  or  pretended  to  be  so.  To 


His  Philosophy.  67 

the  great  indignation  of  the  liberals,  the  clergy 
assumed  a  large  share  in  the  government 
It  appeared  equally  impossible  to  believe 
what  the  clergy  taught,  and  to  oppose  the 
clergy.  To  be  a  spiritualist,  even  without 
being  a  Christian,  was  quite  enough  to  make 
one  appear  reactionary  in  the  eyes  of  certain 
malcontents,  and  of  such  old  revolutionists  as 
might  be  left.  Romanticism,  when  it  broke 
out,  introduced  a  new  element.  This  ele- 
ment was  neither  Bonald's  orthodoxy  nor  the 
poetry  of  Chateaubriand's  Christian  doctrine; 
it  was  the  poetry  of  Christian  art,  and  in  par- 
ticular of  Gothic  architecture.  It  was  the  wor- 
ship of  the  stone  edifices  in  which  the  Emperor 
had  re-established  the  worship  of  Christ,  as 
if  in  order  to  create  and  consecrate  the  wor- 
ship of  Caesar.  From  1815  to  1830,  the  great 
question  in  the  salotis  was,  "What  think  you 
of  God?" 

Jouffroy  entered  the  Normal  School  in  1813, 
with  an  eager  desire  to  know  what  philosophers 
could  tell  him  on  this  subject.  We  already 
know  that  Cousin  discoursed  solely  of  the 
origin  of  ideas,  and  that  Jouffroy  exclaimed, 
"  Philosophy  is  in  a  hole  !  "  My  generation, 
twenty  years  later,  was  still  pursued  by  the 
same  thoughts.  What!  God  willed  creation? 
The  infinite  willed  the  finite?  There  was  a 


68  Victor  Cousin. 

God  before  creation  and  a  God  after;  a  God 
different  from  himself?  The  perfect  God 
willed  his  creature  imperfect  ?  He  willed  it 
criminal  ?  The  problem  of  the  fall,  the  prob- 
lem of  redemption,  and  what  I  should  call 
the  problem  of  the  sacraments,  disturbed  our 
sleep.  We  found  little  external  help.  The 
refutation  of  Locke's  sensationalism  was  con- 
tinued at  College  and  at  the  Normal  School. 
The  clergy,  in  exhortations  made  on  purpose 
for  us,  gave  us  little  but  rhetoric.  The  ablest 
among  them  repeated  Chateaubriand.  Like 
Jouffroy,  we  asked  philosophers  to  solve  our 
doubts :  we  asked  this  of  Jouffroy  himself,  and 
above  all  of  Cousin,  who  was  our  oracle. 

Cousin  admitted  the  infinite.  All  his  meta- 
physics and  all  his  psychology  were  full  of 
it.  He  distinguished  with  great  care  between 
philosophy  and  religion,  and  maintained  with 
unshaken  firmness  the  principle  of  the  inde- 
pendence of  philosophy;  but  at  the  same  time 
he  regarded  religion  as  necessary.  His  own 
metaphysical  beliefs  did  not  differ  from  Chris- 
tian metaphysics;  at  least  he  believed  this 
to  be  the  case,  and  wished  it  to  be  so.  In 
his  lectures  and  in  the  various  philosophi- 
cal works  which  he  published  up  to  1830, 
God  is  everywhere  to  be  found,  creation  and 
providence  almost  nowhere.  These  words  are 


His  Philosophy.  69 

hardly  met  with,  and  if  at  all,  it  is  rather 
a  matter  of  phrase  than  of  reflection.  He 
was  one  of  those  whom  the  word  "crea- 
tion" frightens,  because  it  expresses  a  thing 
which,  being  analogous  to  no  other,  cannot 
be  explained  for  lack  of  an  analogue,  and 
consequently  appears  impossible  and  absurd. 
After  all,  human  learning  explains  "  the  how  " 
of  nothing.  It  takes  refuge  in  comparisons. 
Where  no  comparison  is  possible,  it  plunges 
into  blind  faith,  or  into  negation  blinder  still, 
if  we  think  of  it.  Cousin  thought  that  he 
had  settled  all  by  saying  that  the  world  is 
necessary  to  God,  just  as  God  is  necessary 
to  the  world,  —  a  theory  wonderfully  like  Spi- 
noza's natura  naturans*  Among  the  Catholics 
the  cry  of  pantheism  was  everywhere  raised. 
In  his  preface  of  1826,  Cousin  defended  him- 
self with  great  care,  great  skill,  and  great  elo- 
quence; because  pantheism,  although  not  a 
crime  in  philosophy,  where  all  opinions  have 
citizenship,  was  at  that  time  a  crime  in  the 
University  and  in  the  State.  He  proved  con- 
clusively that  he  had  always  taught  the  exist- 
ence of  freedom,  in  God  and  in  ourselves; 
and  freedom  implies  an  existence  not  only 
distinct  but  separate.  But  men  like  Pierre 
Leroux  on  one  side,  and  the  Catholics  on  the 
»  Nature  producing  Nature. 


70  Victor  Cousin. 

other,  maintained  that  even  if  this  defence 
was  successful  in  proving  separate  causes, 
—  and  this  they  did  not  concede,  —  it  was 
by  no  means  successful  in  proving  plurality 
of  substance.  Cousin's  defence  was  full  of 
invectives  against  Spinoza,  but  full  of  Spi- 
nozism  in  its  doctrines.  What  appears  most 
clearly  is,  that  Cousin  was  a  pantheist,  that  he 
was  interested  in  proving  that  he  was  not  so, 
and  that  he  honestly  believed  he  was  not 
so,  because,  while  admitting  the  principle,  he 
rejected  and  condemned  the  conclusions. 

For  my  part,  I  do  not  see  what  is  gained 
in  clearness  by  preferring  pantheism  to  cre- 
ation. I  dismiss  as  out  of  the  question  all 
the  foolish  charges  of  immorality  brought 
against  pantheists.  Charges  relating  to  ten- 
dency flourish  nowhere  so  well  as  in  meta- 
physics and  in  the  quarrels  of  metaphysicians. 
Were  I  required  to  mention  a  moralist  per- 
fectly pure  and  perfectly  irreproachable,  I 
should  mention  the  pantheist  Cousin ;  and 
I  should  freely  say  that  Spinoza,  who  is  still 
more  of  a  pantheist,  or  rather  more  incontes- 
tably  so,  is  a  saint.  But  could  Cousin  believe 
it  to  be  an  intelligible  doctrine  that  this  uni- 
verse, not  in  itself  necessary,  is  yet  eternally 
necessary  to  God;  that  this  universe,  essen- 
tially changeable,  is  eternally  produced  by  a 


His  Philosophy.  71 

Being  whose  principal  attribute  is  unchange- 
ableness ;  that  this  world,  where  all  is  imperfect, 
where  evil  has  so  large  a  share,  is  the  neces- 
sary manifestation  of  a  perfect  intelligence  and 
of  an  infinite  power?  After  having  set  forth 
in  magnificent  language  the  unity,  the  eter- 
nity, the  unchangeableness  of  God,  how  could 
Cousin  set  forth  on  the  next  page,  in  language 
not  less  magnificent,  that  this  same  God  can- 
not be  a  solitary  king,  that  evil  and  the  finite 
are  necessary  to  His  perfection,  that  they  are  in 
Him,  —  a  statement  which  looks  like  saying  that 
they  are  He?  Cousin  found  the  same  asser- 
tion in  Saint  Augustine.  This  is,  it  may  be,  a 
lucky  find  for  an  advocate,  but  what  is  such  an 
argument  in  the  mouth  of  a  philosopher? 

By  this  same  argument,  as  he  avowed,  he 
proclaimed  the  unity  of  substance.  Did  he 
establish  as  firmly  as  he  believed  the  duality 
of  cause?  When  he  says  that  he  makes  God 
a  free  cause,  does  he  not  seem  to  forget  those 
famous  pages  in  which  he  set  forth  that  it  is 
as  necessary  for  God  to  create  as  it  is  for 
the  universe  to  have  a  Creator?  There  is  in 
his  "  Xenophanes  and  the  Eleatics,"  which 
was  first  inserted  as  an  article  in  "  Universal 
Biography,"  and  afterward  became  one  of  his 
best  books,  a  curious  passage,  in  which  he 
first  supposes,  as  all  his  teaching  obliged  him 


72  Victor  Cousin. 

to  suppose,  that  there  is  one  and  only  one 
substance,  namely,  God,  substance  and  cause, 
from  whom  are  produced  all  the  phenomena 
that  make  up  the  variable  form  of  this  uni- 
verse. Although  these  phenomena  exist  in 
His  substance  and  proceed  from  His  will,  they 
are  distinct  from  Him,  if  indeed  they  are  not 
separate  from  Him  !  But  how  far  distinct?  To 
which  does  the  entity  belong?  Does  it  belong 
especially  to  the  world,  as  the  lonians  thought, 
or  to  God,  as  the  Eleatics  would  have  it? 
To  the  lonians,  God  is  little  more  than  the 
totality  of  phenomena.  To  the  Eleatics,  the 
world  is  no  more  than  a  dream,  a  shadow, 
an  empty  show.  And  yet  —  this  saying  es- 
capes Cousin's  lips  —  of  these  two  solutions 
the  one  is  as  natural  as  the  other;  that  is  to 
say,  he  is  not  able  to  choose  between  them. 
Indeed,  at  the  close  of  this  article  he  pro- 
poses to  return  to  the  belief  of  common- 
sense;  and  thus  the  last  word  of  science  is 
an  abdication. 

What  he  proposed  in  this  article  he  held 
throughout  his  philosophical  career.  We  have 
seen  that  he  declared  God's  incomprehensi- 
bility to  be  equivalent  to  His  destruction,  and 
that  He  would  necessarily  be  incomprehensi- 
ble if  He  remained  absolutely  indivisible ;  then 
we  have  seen  him  inclining  toward  the  perfect 


His  Philosophy.  73 

unity  of  the  Alexandrians  and  the  Eleatics,  at 
the  same  time  that  he  sought  in  the  absence  of 
reflection,  that  is  in  unification,  the  solution 
of  the  problem  of  ontological  reality;  finally, 
we  have  seen  him,  after  having  oscillated 
from  Spinoza  to  Xenophanes,  suddenly  appeal 
to  common  sense,  —  to  the  ancient  faith  of 
our  fathers,  —  preserving  intact  his  belief  in 
dogmas  while  giving  up  systematic  explana- 
tion of  them.  This  is  what  I  call  renouncing 
metaphysics  without  renouncing  natural  re- 
ligion. It  is  a  hardly  disguised  scepticism 
concerning  systems,  a  confident  and  absolute 
faith  in  dogmas.  I  cut  short  the  objections,  as 
I  have  cut  short  my  summary  of  the  system; 
I  merely  wish  to  give  indications.  It  is  the 
man,  more  than  anything  else,  that  I  study 
in  M.  Cousin. 

I  have  only  eulogies  to  bestow  on  the  fun- 
damental principles  of  his  morals.  He  is  a 
great  and  pure  moralist.  He  has  not  gone 
so  deeply  into  questions  of  morals  as  some 
of  his  disciples.  But  Franck,  Caro,  Janet,  who 
will  leave  a  luminous  trace  in  ethics,  proceed 
directly  from  him.  He  laid  down  the  true 
principles  with  the  sure  hand  of  a  master; 
he  unfolded  them  in  that  grand  style  of  which 
he  knew  the  secret,  —  a  style  which  uplifts  and 
strengthens  the  soul.  Here  again  it  must  be 


74  Victor  Cousin. 

remembered  that  he  rescued  us  from  the  hon- 
est but  narrow  school  of  the  ideologists,  —  a 
school  of  right  precepts  and  false  principles. 
He  was  the  first  in  a  long  time  'to  refer  duty  to 
its  true  source,  which  is  reason,  and  to  study 
duty  in  its  true  character  as  an  absolute  and  in- 
violable rule.  Feeling  was  given  its  place  as  a 
useful  auxiliary,  —  but  a  mere  auxiliary,  whose 
proper  function  is  to  render  obedience  easy, 
and  which  should  never  usurp  the  master's  place. 
He  summed  up  his  moral  doctrine  admirably 
in  the  book  called  "  The  True,  the  Beautiful, 
and  the  Good,"  into  which  he  put  all  of  his 
teaching  that  need  be  preserved,  and  all  that 
he  wished  to  have  preserved.  As  to  ethics  at 
least,  he  has  nothing  to  erase,  nothing  to 
change.  As  often  as  he  encountered  a  moral 
question,  whether  in  writing  or  speaking,  he 
treated  it  in  the  same  spirit,  surely,  firmly, 
soberly.  I  have  but  one  fault  to  find,  a  se- 
rious fault :  it  concerns  what  he  himself  called 
the  absolution  of  success,  —  a  doctrine  in  which 
is  involved  the  theory  of  necessary  men. 

How  can  the  doctrine  of  duty,  which  is  so 
often  the  doctrine  of  sacrifice,  be  reconciled 
with  the  absolution  of  success?  How  can 
success  be  separated  from  force?  The  right  is 
either  invincible  or  it  is  not  so.  How  can  the 
duty  of  obeying  force  be  given  a  place  beside 


His  Philosophy.  75 

it?  If  the  victory  of  force  gives  absolution, 
then  the  difference  between  crime  and  virtue  is 
one  of  dimensions  only.  As  soon  as  we  de- 
part from  the  absolute  sovereignty  of  right  and 
duty,  which  are  the  two  forms  of  eternal  justice 
among  men,  we  fall  into  fluctuating  morals 
which  are  opposed  to  morality.  Never  was  a 
man  more  constantly  crowned  by  success  than 
Bonaparte  up  to  his  Russian  campaign ;  hence 
no  man  ever  had  more  genius  than  he  had 
for  fifteen  years,  nor  more  right  to  obedience. 
What  sort  of  morality  is  this ;  and  what  sort  of 
philosophy  of  history?  A  cannon-shot  fired  at 
Waterloo  transfers  to  another  the  genius  and 
the  right  to  impose  obedience.  It  was  only  up 
to  this  moment  that  Bonaparte  was  great  and 
legitimate.  In  spite  of  all  Cousin  can  say,  the 
theory  of  success  is  the  contradiction  of  duty, 
just  as  the  theory  of  providential  men  is  the 
contradiction  of  liberty.  The  supporters  of 
such  theories  demand  freedom  in  metaphysics 
and  politics,  and  admit  fatalism  in  history ! 

It  was  this  same  Cousin  who  uttered  the  fatal- 
istic saying,  "  Heroes  must  be  pardoned  the 
stepping-stones  to  their  greatness ;  "  and  this 
other,  "  No  one  was  conquered  at  Waterloo." 

Some  one  was  conquered  at  Waterloo,  and 
that  one  was  Napoleon,  and  I  shall  presently 
show  that  there  was  still  another ;  but  Cousin 


7 6  Victor  Cousin. 

means  that  Napoleon  was  not,  or  had  ceased 
to  be,  France.  Napoleon  no  longer  had  the 
strength  to  govern ;  hence  he  no  longer  had  the 
right.  He  began  to  be  conquered  in  Russia; 
hence  he  ceased  to  be  great.  How  does  this 
differ  from  the  language  of  one  who  confounds 
justice  with  interest?  Cousin  errs  in  his  his- 
torical doctrine,  because  he  follows  Hegel.  He 
is  much  truer,  much  more  himself  in  his  moral 
doctrine,  which  is  contradicted  by  his  histori- 
cal doctrine.  His  heart  was  never  with  Napo- 
leon, even  when  Napoleon's  genius  and  success 
seemed  infallible.  Cousin  felt  that  Napoleon 
was  the  enemy  of  right.  In  those  last  years, 
when  the  soldier  of  Vendemiaire  and  Brumaire 
was  seized  by  the  mania  for  universal  sway, 
Cousin  felt  him  to  be  his  country's  enemy.  All 
hearts  and  minds  were  disturbed  at  this  fatal 
time,  even  the  greatest.  Guizot  sets  out  for 
Ghent;  Cousin,  acting  with  as  much  decision 
though  in  greater  obscurity,  enlists  in  the  royal 
volunteers.  He  goes  to  Vincennes  to  fight  the 
enemy  of  liberty  and  to  aid  the  enemy  of  his 
country.  They  said  one  to  another:  Ubi  lib- 
ertas,  ibi  patrial  Posterity  sees  more  clearly; 
it  has  better  disentangled  the  elements  of  a  situ- 
ation so  complex.  It  is  for  the  native  country 
against  the  foreigner.  The  foreigner  defeated 
1  Where  liberty  is,  there  is  our  country. 


His  Philosophy.  77 

and  driven  back,  it  would  have  been  for  right 
against  the  despot. 

There  were  two  conquered  at  Waterloo :  for 
Bonaparte  we  could  be  consoled,  but  for  France 
we  ought  even  to-day  to  remain  inconsolable. 
If  it  had  not  been  for  1815,  there  would  have 
been  no  1870.  Sedan  is  the  sequel  to.  Water- 
loo. Cousin's  phrase  was  almost  impious,  but 
its  effect  was  to  give  him  greater  importance. 
Instead  of  seeing  in  it  a  double  historical  error 
and  an  error  in  morals,  people  looked  upon 
it  as  the  height  of  patriotism.  This  phrase 
sounded  like  a  revenge.  Watchwords  and 
banners  lead  men  oftener  than  arguments  and 
reason.  The  day  when  Gambetta  found  his 
phrase  (his  first  phrase),  "  We  are  the  irrecon- 
cilables,"  he  gained  half  the  battle.  And  Proud- 
hon,  with  all  his  great  talent  and  his  vigorous 
polemics  that  no  one  now  reads,  may  be  summed 
up  in  the  two  phrases,  "  God,  withdraw !  "  and 
"  Property  is  theft"  He  was  sorry  for  them, 
suffered  from  them,  took  them  back.  To  Ba- 
roche,  who  said  to  him,  "You  do  not  believe 
in  God,"  he  replied,  "How  do  you  know?" 
But  what  could  he  do?  On  the  strength  of 
these  two  sayings  he  was  christened  atheist 
and  communist.  A  tribune  may  formulate 
phrases,  especially  if  he  is  nothing  but  a  tribune. 
The  duty  of  a  philosopher  is  to  be  circum- 


78  Victor  Cousin.  ' 

spect ;  the  imagination  is  his  enemy.  This  is 
what  caused  it  to  be  said  of  Cousin  by  a 
powerful  but  malevolent  critic,  that  he  was 
not  so  much  a  philosopher  as  a  philosophical 
orator. 

Perhaps  he  gave  way  to  an  orator's  fondness 
for  brilliant  formulas  when  he  put  forth  his 
theory — long  regarded  as  irrefutable,  but  now 
rather  out  of  fashion  —  of  the  alternation  of 
the  four  systems :  each  epoch  beginning  with 
sensationalism,  rising  afterward  to  idealism, 
passing  through  scepticism,  and  finally  plung- 
ing into  mysticism.  This  is  clever  and  brilliant, 
but  not  true.  It  is  philosophical  romance. 
Pythagoras  and  the  Eleatics  partake  more  of 
idealism  than  Plato ;  Plato  was  only  succeeded 
by  the  Alexandrians  after  a  long  interval ;  his 
immediate  successor  was  Aristotle.  In  support 
of  his  theory,  Cousin  was  obliged  to  trans- 
form the  stoics  into  spiritualists.  He  had  less 
trouble  with  the  mediaeval  schools,  because, 
being  unacquainted  with  them,  he  easily  made 
them  correspond  to  his  classification. 

I  do  not  mean  that  he  was  lacking  in  phi- 
losophical erudition.  He  was  not  a  rival  of 
Schleiermacher  nor  of  Ansse  de  Villoison.  His 
mind  was  occupied  with  something  besides 
philological  discoveries.  Nevertheless  he  trans- 
lated Plato,  and  edited  Proclus  and  Descartes. 


His  Philosophy.  79 

His  studies  on  Abelard  were  excellent  and 
numerous.  There  were  strange  gaps  in  his 
learning.  I  can  bear  witness  that,  after  having 
translated  almost  the  whole  of  Plato,  he  knew 
Aristotle  only  through  to  M.  Ravaisson's  book. 
The  translation  of  Book  XII.  of  Aristotle's 
Metaphysics,  published  by  him  in  1837,  is  a 
task  that  I  performed  in  his  class  at  the  Nor- 
mal School  in  1836.  I  read  my  translation  to 
him.  He  made  very  few  changes  in  it,  and  the 
changes  he  made  were  not  always  felicitous. 
We  perceived  that  he  was  altogether  a  novice 
in  this  study;  and  when  I  afterward  re-read 
our  joint  production,  having  become  a  little 
more  familiar  with  the  works  of  Aristotle, 
I  found  in  it  more  than  one  mistranslation. 
Cousin's  knowledge  of  Greek  was  that  of  a  man 
of  letters,  not  that  of  a  scholar ;  and  Aristotle's 
Greek  is  almost  a  tongue  apart.  There  is  no 
Hellenist  who  understands  Aristotle  as  well 
as  Barthelemy  Saint-Hilaire,  who  is,  properly 
speaking,  no  Hellenist  at  all. 

Cousin  was  impelled  to  translate  Plato  by 
his  own  tastes  as  a  great  writer  and  a  spiritual- 
istic philosopher;  it  was  also  of  set  purpose 
that  he  edited  Proclus  and  Descartes.  His 
studies  on  Abelard  and  Pascal  were  only  in- 
cidents in  his  life,  —  the  discovery  of  a  manu- 
script, a  controversy  engaged  in.  Proclus, 


8o  Victor  Cousin. 

however,  lay  very  near  his  heart.  In  the 
Alexandrians  he  studied  the  doctrine  of  unity 
and  that  of  the  trinity.  It  was  here  rather 
than  in  Leibnitz  that  he  found  eclecticism. 

He  identified  himself  with  the  eclectic 
method,  which  gave  the  name  to  his  philoso- 
phy. What  then  is  eclecticism?  It  is  much, 
and  it  is  nothing.  It  is  a  little  like  opportun- 
ism, —  something  which  no  one  can  reject  when 
confined  to  its  beginnings,  but  which  no  one 
can  accept  when  pushed  to  its  ultimate  con- 
sequences. If  opportunism  means  that  every- 
thing must  be  done  seasonably,  at  an  oppor- 
tune time,  it  is  a  platitude;  if  it  means  that 
we  must  change  with  circumstances,  and  pre- 
fer whatever  opinion  serves  our  turn,  it  be- 
comes a  shameful  thing. 

In  the  same  way  every  one  will  accept 
eclecticism,  if  it  is  solely  a  question  of  taking 
from  each  school  whatever  there  is  in  it  that 
is  true  and  sensible.  But  professional  eclec- 
tics give  to  it  greater  depth  of  meaning.  They 
begin  by  laying  down  the  principle  that  each 
system  is  true  by  what  it  affirms  and  false  by 
what  it  denies.  This  seems  very  profound ; 
yet  it  is  really  a  bit  of  useless  verbal  jugglery. 
Materialism,  they  say,  is  true  in  that  it  affirms 
the  existence  of  matter  and  exactly  defines 
its  attributes ;  it  is  false  in  what  it  denies,  for 


His  Philosophy.  81 

spirit  exists,  although  materialism  denies  its 
existence.  Very  good  ;  but  the  formula  is  in- 
accurate, because  spiritualism  does  not  imply 
the  negation  of  matter.  And  how  can  scep- 
ticism be  true  by  what  it  affirms,  when  it 
affirms  nothing?  It  is  true  when  it  doubts 
what  is  doubtful,  and  false  when  it  doubts 
what  is  certain.  Of  scepticism  this  is  all  that 
can  be  said  with  any  regard  for  the  truth; 
but  when  this  is  said,  no  great  discovery 
is  made  !  And  mysticism,  —  what  is  its  share 
in  the  truth,  I  query?  On  the  one  hand,  it 
denies  reason;  on  the  other,  it  affirms  the 
trance  and  clairvoyance  in  the  trance.  It  is 
mistaken  throughout.  What  becomes  of  the 
formula?  Let  us  take  an  example  from  some 
particular  doctrine,  that  of  Malebranche  for  in- 
stance. Malebranche  denies  the  direct  action 
of  spirit  on  matter ;  he  is  wrong  in  what  he 
denies.  He  affirms  physical  predetermina- 
tion; is  he  right  in  what  he  affirms? 

The  first  claim  of  eclecticism  is  therefore  to 
be  rejected.  The  second  is,  that  everything 
is  already  discovered.  Henceforward  nothing 
new  is  to  be  found.  All  truths  are  scattered 
through  the  four  systems.  We  need  only  go 
and  seek  them  with  a  view  to  uniting  them 
into  one  general  synthesis.  This  second  for- 
mula is  still  stranger  than  the  first,  for  we 

6 


82  Victor  Cousin. 

ask,  "  At  what  time  did  this  begin  to  be  true?  " 
I  know  very  well  that  Plato,  being  a  great 
lover  of  traditions  and  a  great  admirer  of  the 
past,  affirms  that  the  Egyptians  possessed 
from  remote  antiquity  all  the  treasures  of 
human  wisdom ;  and  I  acknowledge  that  Aris- 
totle takes  care  to  connect  each  of  his  opin- 
ions with  an  opinion  of  some  philosopher 
before  him.  It  is  indeed  true  that  the  dis- 
coveries of  our  predecessors  ought  not  to  be 
lost  to  us.  But  does  it  follow  that  we  cannot 
make  discoveries  in  our  turn?  Among  phi- 
losophical doctrines  is  there  none  which  be- 
longs exclusively  to  Plato  or  to  Aristotle? 
What  says  M.  Cousin  himself?  That  we 
must  continually  study  the  human  conscious- 
ness ;  that  this  book  is  more  instructive  than 
all  of  those  which  are  piled  up  in  libraries.  The 
eclectics,  by  their  second  formula,  fall  into 
the  sophism  which  consists  in  attributing  to 
the  whole  what  is  true  only  of  a  part.  It  is 
true  that  many  truths  have  been  discovered ; 
but  it  is  false  that  there  are  none  left  to  be 
discovered,  and  that  we  are  reduced  to  live 
by  borrowing. 

Once  infatuated  with  eclecticism,  a  man  is 
not  only  disinclined  to  think  for  himself,  but 
he  enters  the  schools  of  teachers  utterly  op- 
posed to  one  another  in  a  settled  spirit  of 


His  Philosophy.  83 

docility  and  conciliation  which  induces  him  to 
accept  a  little  from  each  and  to  unite  oppo- 
sites.  This  extreme  aptness  to  conciliate  has 
for  its  first  effect  to  destroy  the  conciliator; 
he  becomes  a  nobody  because  he  belongs 
to  everybody.  He  generalizes  to  excess,  he 
overlooks  distinctions,  and  without  distinc- 
tions there  are  no  ideas.  It  is  idle  for  the 
eclectics  to  defend  themselves  from  the  charge 
of  syncretism.  They  do  not  think  they  are 
syncretists,  they  do  not  wish  to  be  so,  but 
they  are  so  by  force  of  circumstances.  An 
eclectic  is  not  a  philosopher,  he  is  a  sort  of 
echo  repeating  all  sounds.  Nor  is  he  an  in- 
telligence, for  he  admits  all  opinions;  nor  a 
will,  since  he  belongs  to  any  one  who  will  take 
him.  I  know  very  well  that  I  am  here  carica- 
turing eclecticism.  Cousin,  in  particular,  and 
Leibnitz  before  him,  had  too  much  worth, 
too  much  native  force,  to  give  way  to  this 
tendency.  For  them,  eclecticism  was  not  phi- 
losophy, but  an  aid  to  philosophy.  They  had 
masters  of  opposite  tendencies  whose  doctrines 
they  excelled  in  harmonizing ;  but  they  them- 
selves were  masters.  They  discovered,  created ; 
they  were  poets,  like  all  great  philosophers. 
They  escaped  the  disadvantages  of  their  meth- 
od, thanks  to  their  individual  superiority. 
At  bottom,  in  Cousin's  doctrine  as  a  whole, 


84  Victor  Cousin. 

there  are  many  truths,  and  there  are  yet  more 
chimeras.  I  should  like  to  apply  to  him  his 
own  formula,  in  a  modified  form,  by  saying 
that  he  is  true  in  what  he  describes  and  false  in 
what  he  explains.  He  describes  very  well  the 
senses,  the  will,  the  different  faculties  of  the 
understanding.  He  shows  very  plainly  that 
motion  must  depend  upon  the  stable,  the  ephe- 
meral upon  the  eternal,  the  finite  upon  the 
infinite.  But  he  neither  explains  how  the  ego 
knows  the  non-ego,  nor  how  the  body  acts  upon 
the  mind  and  the  mind  upon  the  body,  nor 
how  the  infinite  creates  the  finite,  nor  how  the 
finite  knows  the  infinite,  appeals  to  it  in  prayer, 
obtains  its  intervention,  or  profits  by  its  guid- 
ance. He  repeats,  as  all  philosophers  do,  that 
philosophy  is  the  science  of  causes.  Philoso- 
phy finds  causes,  shows  the  effects  of  causes, 
names  and  classifies  causes ;  but  it  never  ex- 
plains them.  It  is  the  nomenclature,  not  the  sci- 
ence, of  causes.  It  knows  the  hoiv  of  nothing. 

M.  Janet,  in  his  profound  and  admirable 
book  on  Victor  Cousin,  asserts  that  Cousin 
constantly  had  the  metaphysical  fever.  He 
had  it  constantly  from  1814  to  1830.  It  was 
a  long  attack, — long  enough,  I  think,  for  his 
fame  as  a  metaphysician.  The  fever  abated  in 
1830,  when  he  set  his  hand  to  the  government 
of  society.  To  the  fever  for  discovering  the  se- 


His  Philosophy.  85 

cret  of  things,  —  the  metaphysical  fever  proper, 
—  succeeded  in  his  case  the  fever  for  controlling 
and  regulating  minds ;  that  is,  the  political  fever 
in  its  noblest  form.  For  I  agree  with  M.  Janet 
that  Cousin  always  had  the  fever;  but  I  differ 
from  my  friend  and  former  pupil,  —  M.  Janet 
will  permit  me  to  recall  that  I  once  had  the 
honor  of  being  his  professor,  though  I  had  not 
the  greater  honor  of  being  his  master,  —  I 
differ  from  M.  Janet  in  affirming  that  if  Cousin 
had  the  fever  in  1830  as  in  1829,  it  was  no  longer 
the  same  fever. 

He  is  not  worn  out,  but  he  is  disenchanted. 
There  is  no  flinching  as  to  doctrines ;  as  to  all 
explanations  he  hesitates.  He  firmly  believes 
in  the  non-ego ;  he  suspects  that  the  conclu- 
sions he  has  drawn  from  the  impersonality  of 
the  reason  are  not  beyond  attack.  He  con- 
tinues to  maintain  and  even  to  prove  that  he  is 
no  pantheist;  he  feels  at  heart  that  he  could 
prove  it  more  peremptorily  if  he  had  insisted 
less  on  the  necessity  of  creation  and  the  unity 
of  substance.  He  is  indignant  that  M.  de 
Broglie  should  see  any  dangers  in  the  diffusion 
of  metaphysical  problems;  but  he  acknowl- 
edges that  they  should  not  and  cannot  be  dif- 
fused beyond  the  ranks  of  the  upper  classes  of 
society;  that  it  is  desirable  that  philosophy 
should  not  unsettle  Christianity;  and  that,  in 


86  Victor  Cousin. 

brief,  religion  is  necessary  to  the  happiness  of 
some  and  the  security  of  others.  He  is  not,  as 
his  enemies  say,  a  penitent  philosopher,  inas- 
much as  he  maintains,  in  theory,  the  absolute 
independence  of  philosophy;  but  he  is  more 
than  ever  a  circumspect  philosopher.  He  has 
been  the  apostle  of  philosophy;  he  becomes 
its  magistrate. 

I  sustain  this  against  M.  Janet  in  two  ways : 
by  what  Cousin  abstained  from  doing,  and  by 
what  he  did.  He  had  been  debarred  from 
teaching  in  1820,  when  he  was  only  twenty- 
eight  years  old.  At  this  time  he  held  no 
public  office  and  practised  no  profession.  For 
seven  years  his  time  was  wholly  his  own.  He 
made  good  use  of  it  by  beginning  his  trans- 
lation of  Plato,  by  editing  Proclus  and  Des- 
cartes. All  his  friends,  his  former  hearers, 
the  pupils  at  the  Normal  School,  thought  that 
he  would  profit  by  his  freedom  to  compose 
a  great  doctrinal  work.  When  people  saw 
that  he  was  employed  on  works  of  mere  erudi- 
tion, the  disappointment  was  general.  "  Every- 
body is  surprised  and  discontented,"  said  Jouf- 
froy  in  a  "  Globe  "  article.  "  Whatever  time 
M.  Cousin  does  not  employ  in  writing  a  book 
on  philosophy,  appears  to  every  one  lost  time. 
I  shared  this  sentiment  at  first,"  he  added,  "  and 
I  still  continue  to  believe  that  it  is  lost  time  for 


His  Philosophy.  87 

M.  Cousin's  fame.  But  upon  reflection  I  no 
longer  believe  it  to  be  lost  time  for  philosophy. 
In  fact,  philosophy  is  complete.  It  is  scattered 
through  the  various  schools,"  etc.  Here  you 
see  the  eclectic.  But  M.  Jouffroy's  theory  is 
refuted  by  M.  Jouffroy's  practice;  for  he  has 
constantly  made  original  observations,  and  his- 
tory only  on  occasion. 

Eclecticism  consoled  this  new  Melanchthon 
for  the  silence  of  the  new  reformer.  Not  be- 
ing an  eclectic,  I  refuse  to  accept  M.  Jouffroy's 
explanation.  It  might  merely  be  said  that 
M.  Cousin  was  at  this  time  dissatisfied  with  the 
solutions  that  he  had  at  first  proposed,  and 
that  he  made  his  trip  to  Germany  to  find  and 
bring  back  new  ideas.  Nevertheless,  it  was  a 
first  attack  of  discouragement.  But  in  1830, 
at  the  age  of  thirty-eight,  Cousin  had  no 
thought  of  seeking  new  teachers.  He  again 
went  to  Germany,  not  this  time  in  the  interests 
of  philosophy,  but  of  primary  and  secondary 
instruction.  He  continued  to  hold  his  chair ; 
he  might  re-occupy  it  if  he  pleased.  He  would 
again  meet  with  the  success  he  had  in  1828 
and  1829.  Glory  is,  as  it  were,  within  his 
grasp,  —  a  popularity  that  nothing  could  equal, 
nothing  could  replace.  No,  he  will  teach  no 
more ;  his  decision  is  final.  Does  he  then  take 
as  a  substitute  an  eloquent  disciple,  another 


88  Victor  Cousin. 

self,  a  Jouffroy,  for  instance?  Not  at  all.  Jouf- 
froy  is  teaching  on  his  own  account.  Cousin  se- 
lects as  a  substitute  M.  Poret,  a  man  neither  cele- 
brated, nor  eloquent,  nor  profound,  and  not  even 
of  his  school.  For  twenty-one  years  he  persists 
in  supplying  a  substitute;  in  1852  he  retires. 

It  would  be  idle  to  allege  that  he  continued, 
for  some  years  after  1830,  to  give  a  course  of 
lectures  at  the  Normal  School.  This  course 
of  lectures  was  given  once  a  week,  on  Sundays. 
It  was  given  to  third-year  students  in  philoso- 
phy, rarely  more  than  two  or  three.  It  was 
neither  a  course  in  philosophy  nor  a  course  in 
the  history  of  philosophy.  It  was  a  drill  pre- 
paratory to  the  examination  for  fellowships. 
It  was  the  nature  of  the  course  that  decided 
Cousin  to  give  it  up,  because  being  president 
of  the  board  of  examiners,  he  could  not  pre- 
pare pupils  for  examination.  In  1836  he 
did  no  more  than  to  read  with  us  Book  XII. 
of  Aristotle's  Metaphysics.  He  did  the  same 
in  1837;  anc*  ^at  was  the  last  year  he  taught 
in  the  school.  He  often  talked  of  something 
besides  what  we  were  reading.  Now  it  was 
a  question  in  philosophy  that  he  suddenly 
broached,  now  one  in  literature;  he  would 
even  talk  with  us  of  drawings  and  paintings, 
as  Michelet  used  to  do  in  his  lectures  to  the 
second-year  students.  Cousin's  lectures  were 


His  Philosophy.  89 

hardly  more  than  chats ;  it  seemed  as  if  he  were 
making  us  a  call.  Armand  Carrel  died  in  that 
year.  It  was  I  who  announced  that  his  life 
was  despaired  of,  that  at  Saint-Mande  they  had 
given  up  all  hopes.  Cousin  began  to  weep,  and 
the  sight  of  his  tears  touched  and  surprised  us. 
The  following  Sunday  he  talked  to  us  simply 
of  Carrel,  with  inexhaustible  fervor ;  and  then 
passed  to  politics.  He  returned  to  politics 
again  in  subsequent  lectures,  and  gradually 
all  this  talk  on  politics  passed  from  the  gov- 
ernment of  France  to  the  government  of  the 
classes  we  should  have  the  next  year.  It  is 
impossible  for  those  who  were  present  at  these 
lectures,  or  rather  at  these  conversations,  to  re- 
gard them  as  the  continuation  of  M.  Cousin's 
career  as  a  teacher.  If  they  must  be  given 
a  name,  I  should  call  them  a  series  of  obser- 
vations on  Aristotle's  philosophy,  of  which 
Cousin's  knowledge  was  but  slight,  and  on  the 
condition  of  professors  of  philosophy,  which 
he  understood  better  than  anybody  else.  I 
can,  then,  say  that  he  ceased  to  teach  in  1 830. 
At  all  events,  he  utterly  abandoned  teaching 
after  1837.  If  he  did  have  a  pupil  in  1836,  it 
was  I ;  for  it  was  seldom  that  he  did  not  keep 
me  with  him  two  or  three  hours  on  a  Sunday, 
turning  over  books  in  his  library  when  it  rained, 
or  strolling  in  the  Luxembourg  Gardens  when 


90  Victor  Cousin. 

it  was  fine.  He  talked  to  me  about  all  things, 
philosophy  among  the  rest;  but  he  did  not 
seem  to  me  like  a  general  seeking  new  con- 
quests, he  rather  resembled  a  conqueror  satis- 
fied with  what  he  possesses,  with  no  thought 
but  of  strengthening  and  organizing  his  do- 
minion. His  career  as  a  professor  was  ended, 
and  so  was  his  career  as  a  philosopher. 

In  fact,  the  book  that  Jouffroy  had  vainly  sued 
for  in  1820  did  not  come  after  1830.  Cousin 
kept  on  writing:  he  did  not  write  his  great 
philosophical  work.  This  mere  fact  is  of  itself 
conclusive  proof.  He  multiplied  new  edi- 
tions, composed  prefaces.  When  these  pref- 
aces refer  to  doctrines,  they  are  mainly  on 
the  defensive.  His  tone  is  that  of  the  super- 
intendent, not  that  of  the  professor.  His 
only  philosophical  work  is  his  translation  of 
Plato,  or  his  volumes  on  Abelard,  or  his 
treatise  on  Pascal ;  that  is,  philosophy  trench- 
ing on  literature,  the  history  of  philosophy, 
erudition  rather  than  doctrine.  By  degrees 
he  publishes  his  former  courses  of  lectures, 
sometimes  as  they  were  delivered,  sometimes 
in  a  more  systematic  form,  as  in  the  case 
of  "  The  True,  the  Beautiful,  and  the  Good." 
But  if  we  look  closely  at  these  publications, 
we  see  that  their  aim  is  not  to  extend  his 
teaching  by  advancing  new  views,  but  to  tone 


His  Philosophy.  91 

down  his  former  teaching  by  taking  from  it 
what  was  venturesome  or  dangerous,  —  a  solici- 
tude worthier  of  the  magistrate  than  of  the  phi- 
losopher. The  philosopher  would  never  have 
consented  to  the  suppressions  and  changes 
which  the  magistrate  imposed.  I  do  not  say 
that  this  revision  is  the  work  of  a  convert, — 
I  do  not  go  to  such  a  length.  Neither  do  I 
say  that  he  had  ceased  to  believe  his  own 
teachings;  but  I  do  aver  that  he  had  grave 
doubts  about  his  explanations  and  his  theo- 
ries. If  he  had  made  a  catechism  of  his 
doctrines,  as  he  perhaps  did  for  the  Catho- 
lic doctrine,  it  would  have  been  of  the  most 
spotless  orthodoxy.  This  accords  with  a  very 
ancient  custom:  the  Platonists,  and  above  all 
the  Pythagoreans,  had  an  esoteric  and  an 
exoteric  doctrine.  Cousin  had  no  esoteric 
doctrine  until  1830. 


CHAPTER  III. 

HIS  REGIMENT. 

MHACHETTE,  the  founder  of  the  cele- 
•  brated  publishing  house,  when  trans- 
formed from  a  professor  into  a  publisher,  took 
for  his  motto  these  words :  Sic  quoqiie  docebo}- 
In  like  manner  M.  Cousin  could  say,  when 
he  ceased  to  be  a  professor  in  order  to  be- 
come the  leader  and  inspirer  of  all  professors, 
that  he  was  but  extending,  and  in  a  manner 
generalizing,  his  instruction.  Let  us  form  a 
clear  conception  of  the  moral  and  material 
situation  at  that  time ;  for  since  then  nothing 
has  been  produced  that  resembles  it  even 
remotely. 

In  France,  M.  Cousin  passed  for  a  very 
obscure  but  profound  philosopher,  who  had 
blasted  with  his  thunderbolts  ideology  and 
sensationalism,  and  founded  for  ages  to  come 
a  great  school  of  philosophy.  He  was  not  so 
highly  thought  of  in  Germany,  where  he  was 
sometimes  accused  of  cribbing  from  Schelling 
1  Thus,  too,  I  shall  teach. 


His  Regiment.  93 

and  Hegel,  and  was  regarded,  not  without  rea- 
son, as  a  disciple  of  these  two  great  men ;  his 
improvements  upon  their  systems  of  philoso- 
phy were  hardly  taken  seriously ;  yet  he  was 
looked  upon  as  a  very  open-minded  man,  as- 
similating promptly  and  readily  the  substance 
of  other  thinkers,  sufficiently  well  versed  in 
antiquity  and  literature,  highly  ingenious,  ar- 
dent, eloquent,  beyond  contradiction  the  first 
of  Frenchmen,  and  almost  worthy  to  have 
studied  at  Bonn  and  Gottingen.  In  France, 
he  had  been  condemned  to  silence  by  the 
reactionary  government;  in  Germany,  thrown 
into  dungeons,  as  he  was  fond  of  saying,  by 
a  despotism.  The  crowds  which  assembled 
in  the  great  amphitheatre  of  the  Sorbonne 
and  overflowed  into  the  court  were  wont  to 
greet  his  appearance  with  frantic  outbursts  of 
applause.  Stretching  forth  his  hand  to  com- 
mand silence,  he  began  in  vibrant  tones,  but 
slowly,  like  one  still  groping  for  his  thought, 
in  words  grave,  strong,  picturesque,  to  pro- 
mulgate his  oracles  to  that  great  audience  of 
impassioned  youth,  of  scholars,  of  adversaries, 
of  old  men  crowding  the  benches  to  hear  him. 
The  auditors  fancied  themselves  admitted  to 
share  in  the  toil  of  thought;  but  what  they 
witnessed  was  merely  its  production  upon 
the  stage.  It  was  a  thrilling  sight  When, 


94  Victor  Cousin. 

on  a  sudden,  he  opened  up  a  vast  horizon, 
or  found  one  of  those  formulas  which  forever 
remain  stamped  upon  the  memory,  haunting 
our  thoughts  and  dreams,  enthusiasm  was  at 
its  height.  He  was  emaciated,  he  seemed 
to  be  in  pain,  his  whole  body  was  trembling 
with  that  famous  metaphysical  fever,  more 
violent  than  the  poet's  frenzy  and  as  fertile  in 
great  results.  His  eyes  literally  flashed  fire. 
He  rarely  smiled,  rarely  spoke  impetuously, 
and  yet  we  felt  that  he  could  be  brilliant 
in  every  way.  This  great  orator,  this  great 
thinker,  was  hostile  to  the  enemy,  —  that  is, 
to  the  counter-revolution  ;  he  had  made  the 
ministers  of  the  Restoration  tremble ;  he  was 
the  prophet  of  the  liberal  party,  the  teacher 
and  revealer  of  the  future.  He  was  the  verita- 
ble idol  of  the  students,  and,  though  these 
young  men  did  not  know  it,  he  was  at  the 
same  time  the  idol  of  society,  for  which  he 
made  his  profundity  palatable  by  coupling 
it  with  endless  charms  of  manner;  he  was, 
besides,  a  writer  of  high  rank,  —  something 
which  cannot  always  be  said  of  talented  ora- 
tors, —  worthy  to  understand  Plato,  and  the  only 
man  of  his  time  worthy  to  translate  Plato. 

After  the  July  Revolution  he  did  not  again 
occupy  his  chair.  Every  one  reckoned  him 
among  the  victors,  although  he  had  not  been 


His  Regiment.  95 

among  the  combatants.  He  had  found  fault 
with  the  Ordinances  ;  he  was  really  opposed 
to  M.  de  Polignac,  but  he  was  not  opposed  to 
Charles  X.,  and  thought  that  without  a  revo- 
lution there  might  have  been  a  return  to  a 
wise  interpretation  of  the  Charter.  He  pro- 
claimed this  loudly  at  first  But  he  had  to 
do  little  violence  to  his  feelings  in  becoming  a 
supporter  of  the  new  government.  He  was 
not  one  of  the  victors,  but  he  was  the  friend 
of  the  victors,  and  favors  rained  down  upon 
him  amid  the  plaudits  of  the  multitude.  The 
multitude  is  an  embodiment  of  caprice.  At 
one  time  it  wishes  its  leaders  to  be  men  of 
the  Brutus  stamp,  devoted  to  the  good  of 
all  and  pitiless  to  themselves;  at  another,  it 
likes  to  pamper  them,  to  make  them  great, 
to  deck  glory  with  all  the  trappings  of  vain- 
glory. The  multitude  took  the  latter  course 
with  Cousin;  it  was  pleased  to  make  him,  at 
the  age  of  forty,  a  member  of  two  Academies, 
a  Councillor  of  State,  a  peer  of  France,  Full 
Professor  in  the  Sorbonne,  supreme  head  of  the 
Normal  School,  and  a  member  of  the  Royal 
Council  of  Public  Instruction.  This  petty  pro- 
fessor, born  in  a  garret  and  inured  to  persecu- 
tion, became  on  a  sudden  a  great  lord.  He 
pleased  the  people  in  this  new  incarnation. 
He  was  one  form  of  the  popular  victory. 


96  Victor  Cousin. 

All  this  promotion  came  to  him  within  three 
years.  He  became  Full  Professor,  member 
of  the  French  Academy,  State  Councillor  Ex- 
traordinary, in  1830;  member  of  the  Royal 
Council,  member  of  the  Academy  of  Moral 
and  Political  Sciences,  and  Director  of  the 
Normal  School,  in  1832;  and  the  next  year 
he  became  a  peer  of  France.  Nothing  now 
remained  but  the  ministry,  to  cap  the  climax 
of  human  greatness;  he  became  a  minister  in 
1840.  We  cannot  at  the  present  time  imagine 
the  power  and  prestige  conferred  by  all  these 
dignities.  The  Revolution  of  1830  had  taken 
away  much  of  their  meaning;  but  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1848  made  them  meaningless.  One  of 
Louis  Philippe's  peers  was  a  mere  upstart  com- 
pared with  a  peer  of  France  under  Charles  X. ; 
but  the  senators  and  State  Councillors  of  to- 
day do  not  admit  of  comparison  with  those 
of  King  Louis  Philippe.  That  the  University 
should  have  its  bench  of  bishops  in  the  Up- 
per House,  —  M.  Villemain,  M.  Cousin,  Baron 
Thenard,  Georges  Cuvier,  —  seemed  in  itself 
a  revolution.  In  Parliament,  M.  Cousin  could 
hold  his  own  against  a  field-marshal,  and 
the  field-marshal  had  to  mind  what  he  was 
about.  But  hardly  anything  is  so  far  from 
our  manners  and  customs  as  the  old  Coun- 
cil of  Public  Instruction. 


His  Regiment.  97 

To-day  we  have  a  Council  made  up  of  forty- 
eight  members.  Among  them  are  five  or  six 
schoolmasters,  —  not  to  mention  a  school- 
mistress, —  elected  for  a  term  of  three  years 
by  their  fellows ;  also  some  teachers  in  commu- 
nal colleges  and  inspectors  of  various  classes. 
The  Council  is  so  made  up,  according  to  the 
framer  of  the  law,  on  the  principle  of  com- 
petency, since  no  one  is  more  competent  than 
the  mistress  of  an  infant  school  to  look  after 
the  instruction  given  by  a  Professor  of  As- 
tronomy in  the  College  of  France.  The  mem- 
bers of  this  Council  meet  at  Paris  twice  a  year, 
for  a  week.  They  decide  all  questions  of  dis- 
cipline, grant  all  licenses,  discuss,  in  summary 
fashion,  all  rules  and  regulations.  Proposed 
regulations  are  sent  to  their  respective  ad- 
dresses on  Monday;  on  Tuesday  they  vote; 
and  on  Wednesday  they  can  read  their  de- 
crees in  the  "  Official  Journal."  An  admirable 
institution,  giving  all  the  authority  to  three 
directors,  and  all  the  responsibility  to  forty- 
eight  councillors,  whose  very  names  are  un- 
known ;  who  do  not  even  know  one  another ! 

When  M.  Cousin  entered  the  Royal  Coun- 
cil, the  councillors  numbered  eight  Each  of 
them  represented  a  department  of  instruction 
over  which  he  had  absolute  control.  There 
were  men  of  letters  such  as  M.  Villemain, 
7 


98  Victor  Cousin. 

chemists  such  as  M.  The*nard,  mathematicians 
such  as  M.  Poisson.  Men  of  this  stamp  were 
not  only  the  chiefs  of  their  order,  they  were 
its  glory  and  its  model.  The  name  of  the 
Minister  of  Public  Instruction  was  Guizot ;  and 
M.  Guizot  was  the  ablest  man  and  beyond 
question  the  greatest  orator  in  the  cabinet. 
M.  Thiers  did  not  take  rank  beside  him  un- 
til later.  Absorbed  by  politics  in  the  larger 
sense,  M.  Guizot  interfered  in  the  government 
of  the  University  only  at  rare  intervals,  to  give 
an  opinion  or  a  direction ;  he  did  not  trouble 
himself  about  either  the  appointments  or  the 
details;  for  such  work  he  had  eight  council- 
lors, eight  ministers.  The  instruction  in  phi- 
losophy was  entirely  under  M.  Cousin's  control. 
He  drafted  his  decisions,  read  them  to  his 
colleagues  for  form's  sake,  and  sent  them  by 
a  secretary  to  the  minister's  office,  where  they 
were  signed  by  the  minister,  also  for  form's 
sake.  A  fine  sight  it  would  have  been  to  see 
M.  Cousin  disputing  M.  The"nard's  orders  touch- 
ing chemistry,  or  M.  Thenard  putting  in  his 
word  about  psychology ! 

M.  Cousin  used  to  say  that  the  instruc- 
tors in  philosophy  formed  his  regiment;  but 
it  was  then  a  regiment  whose  colonel  was 
a  Marshal  of  France.  He  had  every  hold 
upon  the  members  of  this  regiment.  In  the 


His  Regiment.  99 

first  place,  he  was  the  head  of  the  Normal 
School.  He  had  this  advantage  over  his 
colleagues  in  the  Council.  He  had  in  this 
school,  subject  to  his  orders,  the  Director, 
M.  Guigniaut,  who  was  a  most  excellent  man, 
and  had  but  one  fault,  —  that  of  being  too 
learned  for  a  Frenchman.  In  truth,  the  only 
director  was  M.  Cousin,  who  looked  after  every- 
thing: finances,  regulations,  discipline,  instruc- 
tion. He  appointed  the  professors,  made  or 
revised  the  programmes  for  literary  and  phi- 
losophical work,  attended  to  the  pettiest  de- 
tails. He  lived  in  the  Sorbonne,  where  he 
occupied  a  fine  suite  of  rooms  crowded  with 
his  books ;  the  Normal  School  was  a  few  steps 
away,  in  the  shabby  and  ruinous  buildings  of 
the  old  Du  Plessis  College,  which  had  been  an- 
nexed —  in  the  eighteenth  century,  at  the  time 
of  the  reform  of  the  old  University  —  to  the 
College  of  Louis  the  Great.  It  was  in  these 
buildings  that  Cousin  had  begun  his  lectures 
in  1814  as  Royer-Collard's  substitute;  but 
the  little  room  with  which  his  predecessors 
had  been  satisfied  became  almost  immedi- 
ately too  small  for  him,  and  he  had  been 
obliged  to  reopen  the  great  hall  of  the  Sor- 
bonne, which  is  inconvenient  but  vast.  When 
the  Du  Plessis  College  had  once  been  aban- 
doned by  the  faculties,  the  Normal  School  — 


ioo  Victor  Cousin. 

relegated  since  1810  to  the  upper  rooms  of 
the  College  of  Louis  the  Great  —  was .  installed 
in  the  old  building.  The  school  was  provided 
with  a  large  dormitory,  a  large  study-room,  a 
large  dining-hall,  a  small  library,  three  small 
rooms  in  which  all  the  lectures  were  held, 
and  for  a  promenade,  with  a  rather  long  and 
gloomy  alley  planted  with  a  few  scrubby  trees 
and  shut  in  on  three  sides  by  the  building, 
and  on  the  other  by  a  long  high  wall  sepa- 
rating it  from  the  College  of  France.  The 
school  communicated  directly  with  the  Col- 
lege of  Louis  the  Great,  which  supplied  the 
students  with  victuals,  and  gave  them  the 
use  of  its  hospital  and  chapel.  In  the  course 
of  the  day  there  were  three  recesses  of  a  half- 
hour  each,  during  which  the  pupils  kept  walk- 
ing rapidly  up  and  down  this  long  alley,  and 
talking  at  a  great  rate  about  politics,  or  about 
romanticism,  which  was  hotly  discussed,  or 
about  the  Abbe"  Lacordaire,  who  had  not  yet 
become  a  Dominican,  and  was  beginning  his 
lectures  at  Stanislas  College. 

Frequently  M.  Cousin  was  seen  coming  in 
unexpectedly  to  call  on  M.  Guigniaut.  The 
bravest  trembled  at  the  sight  of  him.  He  ap- 
peared very  tall  because  he  was  very  thin,  and 
in  winter  he  wore  the  strangest  costume  imagi- 
nable. He  wore  a  gray  hat  and  a  long  great- 


His  Regiment-  101 

coat  of  blue  barracan  having  three  capes  lined 
with  red  plush,  and  he  carried  a  cane.  Those 
flashing  eyes  peering  from  under  his  gray  hat, 
and  darting  glances  at  us  as  he  passed,  gave 
him  the  air  of  an  ogre  seeking  whom  he  might 
devour.  We  knew  that  he  was  not  unkind; 
but  he  was  fantastic,  and  fond  of  being  thought 
inexorable.  He  was  subject  to  unlucky  freaks, 
like  that,  for  instance,  of  depriving  us  of  our 
Thursday.  M.  Guigniaut  was  afraid  of  him 
as  well  as  we,  though  they  had  passed  a  whole 
year  together  on  the  benches  of  the  Normal 
SchooL  The  wishes  of  M.  Cousin  were  com- 
municated to  us  by  M.  Guigniaut,  whom  we 
held  responsible  for  them ;  and  M.  Guigniaut's 
popularity,  which  should  have  been  consider- 
able, rather  suffered  from  this  circumstance. 
So  long  as  M.  Cousin  was  there,  the  school 
felt  oppressed  by  the  dread  of  some  unknown 
misfortune.  I  suppose  this  feeling  is  the  natu- 
ral result  of  the  proximity  of  a  sovereign  mas- 
ter. When  the  master  came  out,  he  used  to 
like  to  accost  some  one  of  us ;  we  were  wont 
to  walk  fast,  but  he  rushed  along  still  more 
rapidly,  brandishing  his  cane  and  shouting  at 
the  top  of  his  voice.  He  took  no  pains  to 
speak  by  the  card ;  he  served  up  to  us  what- 
ever ideas  came  into  his  head,  and  whatever 
words  first  offered,  speaking  with  incredible 


IO2  Victor  Cousin. 

fire,  losing  sometimes  a  little  of  his  dignity  but 
never  a  jot  of  his  authority.  We  admired  and 
trembled.  Sometimes  we  were  sorely  tempted 
to  laugh,  —  I  still  blush  for  it;  the  reason  was 
that  we  did  not  understand  him,  or  that  he 
abused  his  superiority  by  making  a  little  fun 
of  us.  It  should  also  be  urged  in  our  defence 
that  he  was  often  eccentric  enough.  When  he 
had  hit  upon  a  paradox,  he  would  push  it  to 
the  verge  of  extravagance,  especially  if  he  per- 
ceived our  bewilderment.  We  thought  him  a 
great  genius,  but  somewhat  mad.  Never  was 
man  more  sensible ;  only  he  had  such  ways 
and  used  such  words  that  it  required  time  to 
learn  their  secret.  He  took  great  delight  in 
talking  to  us  of  our  future,  promising  us,  with 
much  condescension,  places  so  far  below  our 
hopes  that  the  mere  thought  made  us  shudder. 
"  As  for  you,  Simon,"  said  he  to  me,  "  I  cannot 
promise  you  Pontivy,  though  it  is  in  the  cen- 
tre of  your  province.  I  shall  try ;  I  am  forming 
combinations.  It  may  be,  if  you  stand  first  in 
your  class,  that  I  can  bring  it  about."  Pontivy 
was  the  last  of  the  royal  colleges,  without  pu- 
pils, without  resources ;  it  was  a  little  town  — 
hardly  more  than  a  village  —  lost  in  the  midst 
of  lower  Brittany.  To  be  relegated  thither 
was  looked  upon  as  a  punishment.  He  said  to 
Saisset,  the  best  scholar  of  us  all ;  "  With  labor 


His  Regiment.  103 

and  perseverance  you  may  aspire  to  anything, 
even  to  a  place  as  inspector  of  schools ! " 
Cousin's  air,  as  he  said  this,  of  profound  respect 
for  that  exalted  position,  was  well  worth  seeing. 
Some  years  later  I  was  at  his  rooms  in  the  Sor- 
bonne,  whither  I  had  gone  to  give  him  some 
notes  for  a  speech  that  he  was  preparing  on 
trade-marks.  A  servant  brought  him  the  card 
of  an  instructor  of  the  fifth  or  sixth  form  in  the 
College  of  Nantes.  "  What  a  bore  !  "  said  he. 
"  I  cannot  deny  myself  to  him :  he  was  my 
school-fellow  at  the  Normal."  To  shorten  the 
ceremony,  he  received  him  standing.  His 
friend  said  with  real  emotion,  "  How  glad  I 
am  to  see  you  !  "  Cousin's  looks  replied,  "  Now 
that  you  have  seen  me  —  "  "  My  children 
outside  are  longing  to  have  the  pleasure  —  " 
That  was  too  much  for  this  unsentimental  peer 
of  France.  He  started  for  his  bedroom  door. 
"  Very  well,"  said  he,  as  he  disappeared,  "  show 
them  Simon.  He  is  my  substitute." 

Cousin  came  in  promptly  at  eight  o'clock 
Sunday  morning  to  give  what  he  called  his 
lecture.  At  the  stroke  of  eight  we  used  to 
see  the  cane,  the  gray  hat,  and  the  blue  barra- 
can great-coat  coming  in  sight  at  the  foot  of 
the  alley.  We  awaited  him  in  the  library,  be- 
tween the  ground-floor  and  the  first  story, — 
two  little  rooms  in  which  books  to  the  num- 


104  Victor  Cousin. 

her  of  about  twenty  thousand  were  heaped 
upon  rough  pine  planks.  This  was  Georges 
Cuvier's  library,  which  Cousin  had  bought  for 
the  school  the  preceding  year.  There  was  a 
long  table  with  benches  for  readers ;  and,  for 
the'  librarian,  —  who  was,  if  I  mistake  not.  our 
school-fellow,  M.  Barroux,  —  a  pine  table,  with 
a  cane-bottomed  chair.  Laying  his  gray  hat, 
his  stick,  and  his  great-coat  on  the  table,  leav- 
ing but  scanty  room  for  my  translation  of 
Book  XII.  of  the  "  Metaphysics,"  he  took  his 
seat  in  Barroux's  easy-chair.  We  placed  our- 
selves on  the  end  of  a  bench  opposite  him. 
There  were  four  of  us,  —  Saisset,  Lorquet,  Bou- 
tron,  and  I.  Saisset,  afterward  the  translator 
of  Spinoza  and  the  author  of  many  fine  articles 
in  the  "  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  "  and  of  sev- 
eral excellent  books,  died  quite  young,  as  titu- 
lar Professor  of  Philosophy  at  the  Sorbonne, 
and  a  member  of  the  Academy  of  Moral  and 
Political  Sciences.  Lorquet  died  a  few  years 
ago,  as  Secretary  of  the  Paris  Faculty  of 
Letters.  Boutron,  who  became  a  distinguished 
economist,  is  dead  too.  All  the  pupils  but  me 
are  dead,  like  their  master. 

I  read  my  translation  of  Book  XII.,  each 
one  offering  his  remarks  with  entire  freedom. 
Cousin,  of  course,  took  the  leading  part  in  the 
debate ;  but  he  discussed  the  subject  like  one 


His  Regiment.  105 

of  us,  making  much  of  each  one's  opinion. 
We  ought  to  have  worshipped  him,  but  there 
was  a  certain  something  that  checked  our  love, 
—  I  think  it  was  fear;  as  for  our  admiration, 
it  knew  no  bounds.  Sometimes  —  almost  in- 
variably —  he  bestrode  some  hobby  introduced 
by  chance,  and,  thus  mounted,  gave  us  a  suc- 
cession of  varied  observations  both  new  and 
admirable,  a  series  of  comparisons,  analogies, 
pictures,  anecdotes;  never,  I  believe,  has  been 
or  will  be  seen  in  a  man's  conversation  such  an 
abundance  of  fine  things.  The  lecture,  begun 
at  eight  o'clock,  was  to  last  an  hour  and  a  half; 
we  were  still  there  at  one.  Then  he  would 
suddenly  take  his  hat  and  say  to  me,  "  Come 
to  the  Luxembourg."  This  obliged  me,  by 
the  way,  to  dispense  with  dining.  Once  at  the 
Luxembourg,  he  began  again  for  my  sole  bene- 
fit. I  think  he  often  forgot  whom  he  addressed, 
and  talked  to  himself.  He  was  literally  inde- 
fatigable, having  the  same  control  of  his  facul- 
ties and  the  same  strong  voice  at  the  end  of 
three  or  four  hours  of  this  monologue  as  at  the 
beginning.  He  left  me  abruptly  toward  night- 
fall, and  went  to  dress  for  a  dinner  with  some 
of  his  friends  in  high  life,  while  I  wandered 
about  the  streets  until  it  was  time  to  go  to 
supper  at  the  Normal.  I  reached  there  at 
eight  o'clock,  dying  of  hunger,  having  had 


io6  Victor  Cousin. 

nothing  to  eat  all  day  but  a  piece  of  dry 
bread  at  seven  in  the  morning. 

What  did  he  talk  of  in  our  Sunday  lecture? 
Of  everything ;  sometimes  even  —  though  but 
seldom  —  of  philosophy.  He  liked  to  talk  of 
his  contemporaries,  —  and  it  was  a  great  treat 
to  hear  him,  —  of  his  German  friends,  of  Hegel 
his  favorite,  of  Schleiermacher,  of  Kant  whom 
he  had  not  seen ;  he  said  less  about  their  phi- 
losophy than  about  their  appearance  and  habits. 
He  also  talked  of  his  colleagues  in  the  Academy: 
Royer-Collard,  Guizot,  both  of  whom  he  re- 
spected and  admired  greatly;  Thiers,  whom 
he  called  his  master  in  politics  and  a  historian 
as  great  as  Livy ;  Villemain,  whom  he  very  sin- 
cerely detested.  He  spoke  also  of  the  roman- 
tic school,  and  made  a  little  fun  of  them  ;  but 
Victor  Hugo's  genius  he  openly  acknowledged. 
He  was  at  this  very  time  patronizing  Hugo's 
canvass  for  a  place  in  the  Academy,  —  an 
unpromising  canvass.  Dupaty  was  preferred 
to  Victor  Hugo,  and  Thiers  said  to  Cousin, 
"I  will  give  Hugo  my  vote  whenever  you  show 
me  four  verses  from  his  pen  which  are  barely 
mediocre." 

Armand  Carrel  died  that  year.  As  I,  a 
very  ardent  politician  of  twenty  years,  was  ac- 
quainted with  him,  I  deemed  myself  smitten  in 
the  person  of  my  chief,  and  nothing  would  do 


His  Regiment.  107 

but  that  M.  Guigniaut,  will  he  nill  he,  should 
grant  me  permission  to  go  to  Saint-Mande  for 
news.  I  was  not  quite  sure  what  M.  Cousin 
would  say  about  it  the  next  day.  He  came 
straight  to  me  on  entering  and  said :  "  Well, 
you  were  at  Saint-Mande  last  evening.  How 
is  he?"  "He  is  gone,"  I  answered,  breaking 
down.  Cousin  turned  away  and  shed  tears ! 
We  were  astounded  but  deeply  touched  by 
this.  These  tears  made  him  in  our  eyes  an- 
other and  a  greater  man.  After  all,  he  shared 
man's  many-sided  nature.  He  used  to  say, 
"A  man  is  complex,  a  people  is  complex." 
His  political  theory  was  partly  based  upon  the 
necessary  complexity  of  races. 

He  talked  much  to  us  about  policy ;  but  it 
was  our  professional  policy,  in  other  words,  our 
future  behavior  toward  His  Honor  the  Pre- 
fect, and  My  Lord  Bishop.  He  hardly  talked 
of  anything  else  during  the  second  semester. 
"  You  will  go  first  to  see  your  bishop.  No,  I 
mistake;  you  will  go  first  to  see  His  Honor 
the  Prefect,  who  is  your  official  superior,  and 
will  say,  '  Your  Honor,  I  come  to  assure  you ;  ' 
or  you  might  even  say  to  the  prefect,  '  M. 
Cousin  has  instructed  me  to  assure  you  that 
the  government  can  at  all  times  rely  — ' "  It 
may  perhaps  be  thought  that  at  this  point  we 
made  a  wry  face,  —  especially  myself  in  my 


io8  Victor  Cousin. 

character  of  great  party  leader ;  but  we  were 
too  much  diverted  by  what  we  heard,  and  too 
certain  that  the  visit  in  question  would  never 
be  made,  to  think  of  anything  but  the  comedy 
thus  acted  out  for  us  four  by  this  high  and 
illustrious  personage.  And  at  the  bishop's 
palace  !  "  '  My  Lord  Bishop,'  —  here  he  cor- 
rected himself  with  grand  gestures,  — '  Mon- 
seigneur,  while  maintaining  the  independence 
of  the  reason  — '  But  no,  it  will  be  better  not 
to  say  that;  speak  only  of  your  respect  for 
the  Church.  '  I  know,  Monseigneur,  that  phi- 
losophy will  never  influence  any  but  the  cul- 
tured classes,  and  that  religion  is  necessary  for 
the  people.  Religion  is  even  necessary  to 
philosophy  to  open  the  way  for  it  or  to  com- 
plete its  action.'  "  And  then  came  some  very 
lofty  reflections  about  the  two  immortal  sisters  ; 
for  it  was  from  Cousin  that  M.  Thiers  borrowed 
this  generous  wine  of  which  we  had  the  first 
taste.  We  were  too  full  of  philosophic  arro- 
gance to  appreciate  what  was  really  able  in  the 
speech  he  put  into  our  mouths;  we  thought 
only  of  the  bishop's  astonishment  if  we  should 
venture  to  treat  him  to  a  domiciliary  lecture 
on  theology,  and  of  Cousin's  own  consterna- 
tion at  hearing  from  the  bishop  that  a  petty 
professor  of  philosophy,  fresh  from  the  Nor- 
mal School,  had  taken  it  upon  himself  to 


His  Regiment.  109 

enact  an  impertinent  farce  in  the  episcopal 
palace. 

He  gave  us  useful  instruction  about  how  to 
employ  our  time,  how  to  conduct  our  private 
studies,  and  how  to  teach  a  class.  He  re- 
commended a  few  books :  the  "  Discourse  on 
Method,"  Bossuet's  "  Knowledge  of  God  and 
of  One's  Self,"  Fenelon's  "  Existence  of  God," 
Father  Buffier.  Leibnitz  is  strong  meat  for 
babes.  "  Don't  think  of  Malebranche ;  he  is  a 
sick  man.  Among  my  own  books,  give  prece- 
dence to  the  'Refutation  of  Locke,'  the  'Preface 
of  1826,'  and  the  first  volume  of  '  Fragments.'  " 

M.  Damiron,  tells,  to  the  glory  of  M.  Cousin, 
that  his  pupils  at  the  Normal  School  were  per- 
fectly free  not  to  read  his  books,  that  they 
might  discuss  them,  that  he  suffered  contra- 
diction with  a  good  grace,  that  it  was  all, 
as  it  were,  among  friends.  This  is  admirable. 
Since  Damiron  says  so,  it  was  certainly  so  in 
Damiron's  time.  It  was  all  among  friends,  I 
freely  admit;  it  was  even  all  among  college 
chums.  Cousin  had  known  Bautain  and  Da- 
miron on  the  college  benches ;  he  talked  with 
them  as  familiars.  But  later  on  he  spoke  not 
only  as  a  superior  but  as  the  chief  of  a  school. 
Sometimes  one  might  have  taken  him  for  a 
comrade ;  but  if,  trusting  to  appearances,  we 
threw  off  constraint,  he  instantly  showed  his 


no  Victor  Cousin. 

claws.  I  learn  from  Damiron  that,  even  in 
boyhood,  Cousin  had  the  habit  and  instinct 
of  superiority;  if  a  dispute  arose,  instead 
of  arguing,  he  inveighed,  wounded,  crushed. 
This  was  a  life-long  characteristic ;  it  need 
hardly  be  said  that  the  Normal  School  was 
the  special  theatre  of  his  galling  and  lordly 
temper.  Nevertheless,  he  was  thoroughly 
acquainted  with  the  pupils,  with  their  defects, 
their  merits,  their  aptitudes.  He  did  not 
lose  sight  of  them  when  once  they  were  in- 
stalled in  colleges  outside  of  Paris.  He  cor- 
responded with  all  who  gave  promise  of  a 
future.  He  recommended  subjects  of  study 
and  theses  for  the  doctorate.  He  sent  lists  of 
books.  If  he  saw  or  suspected  that  a  teacher 
was  on  the  wrong  track,  Cousin  quickly  faced 
him  about.  It  may  be  that  he  was  not  very 
fond  of  the  soldiers  of  his  regiment,  for  after 
all  he  was  not  tender;  but  he  was  passion- 
ately fond  of  talent  and  of  philosophy.  No 
one  had  more  power  than  he  to  awaken,  fos- 
ter, develop,  the  love  of  work.  Jouffroy  had 
nothing  like  the  same  power  of  propagandism. 
Jouffroy's  influence  was  exerted  only  upon  a 
small  body  of  friends  and  disciples,  whose 
numbers  he  did  not  seek  to  increase.  He 
was  the  man  for  the  chosen  few,  as  Cousin 
was  the  man  for  crowds.  Jouffroy,  when  we 


His  Regiment.  in 

went  to  seek  him,  was  kind,  gentle,  helpful; 
Cousin  was  neither  kind  nor  gentle,  but  he 
came  himself  to  seek  us;  he  shook  us  up; 
he  made  us  work.  In  one  word,  he  was  a 
master ;  and  what  a  master !  I  think  now 
that  we  were  not  so  grateful  as  we  should 
have  been.  His  pettinesses  hid  from  our 
view  his  great  qualities. 

On  leaving  the  Normal  School,  it  is  abso- 
lutely the  rule  to  go  up  for  the  fellowship 
examination.  The  future  professors  of  phi- 
losophy found  M.  Cousin  there,  for  he  acted 
as  chairman  of  the  examining  committee  every 
year  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  He  not  only 
put  his  old  Normal  School  pupils  to  a  new 
and  decisive  test,  but  passed  judgment  on  all 
the  candidates  from  other  schools.  Thus  all 
the  professors  in  the  royal  colleges  passed 
through  his  hands;  for  a  fellowship  was  the 
only  door  opening  to  a  chair  in  the  royal  col- 
leges, —  called  since  1848  "  Lyceums."  To  be 
admitted  to  compete  for  a  fellowship,  three 
years  at  the  Normal  School,  or  two  years 
as  resident  graduate  at  a  college,  were  requi- 
site. All  candidates,  whether  graduates  of  the 
Normal  School  or  resident  graduates  of  a  col- 
lege, must  be  masters  of  arts; 1  the  diploma  of 
bachelor  of  sciences  was  also  required  when 
1  Licencies  es  lettres. 


H2  Victor  Cousin. 

Cousin  was  regnant,  but  has  since  been  dis- 
continued. There  were  in  the  first  place  two 
written  examinations  for  sifting  the  candi- 
dates,—  one  on  a  philosophical  subject,  the 
other  on  a  subject  in  the  history  of  philos- 
ophy. Each  examination  lasted  six  hours. 
The  subject  was  given  by  the  chairman  of 
the  committee.  The  candidates  admitted  to 
the  oral  examinations  drew  by  lot  the  sub- 
ject of  a  thesis;  they  then  drew  by  lot, 
among  their  competitors,  for  an  opponent. 
The  examination  took  place  the  next  day: 
the  first  man  maintained  a  thesis  upon  the 
subject  assigned;  the  second  proposed  ob- 
jections, to  which  a  reply  was  made;  the 
discussion  lasted  an  hour;  then  the  lots  were 
drawn  anew,  for  new  subjects  and  new  oppo- 
nents; those  who  had  the  day  before  main- 
tained the  theses,  on  this  second  day  stated 
objections,  and  those  who  had  stated  ob- 
jections maintained  the  theses.  These  two 
debates  constituted  the  argumentative  exami- 
nation. A  third  examination  consisted  of  a 
lecture,  to  last  an  hour,  the  subject  of  which, 
like  those  of  the  two  debates,  was  assigned 
by  the  chairman  and  drawn  for  by  the  can- 
didates. Thus  this  competitive  examination 
covered  at  least  five  days,  not  including  the 
days  of  preparation.  When  the  competitors 


His  Regiment.  113 

were  numerous,  each  examination  lasted  sev- 
eral days,  and  the  competition  for  fellowships 
was  prolonged  for  several  weeks.  I  do  not 
think  there  is  any  ordeal  more  wearing  on 
candidates ;  it  is  also  very  wearing  on  the 
judges.  Not  one  of  the  eight  members  of 
the  Royal  Council  neglected  his  duty  of  pre- 
siding each  year  at  the  examination  for  fel- 
lowships in  his  department.  And  this  was 
no  committee-meeting  where  one  could  get 
up,  unbend  his  mind,  be  indifferent  at  cer- 
tain times  to  what  was  going  on;  one  must 
pay  attention  to  everything,  from  beginning  to 
end,  notice  everything,  remember  everything. 
I  have  witnessed  sessions  beginning  at  eight  in 
the  morning  and  lasting  until  six  in  the  even- 
ing, with  an  intermission  of  one  hour  for  the 
mid-day  meal,  and  that  for  weeks  at  a  time. 

I  have  sat  many  times  on  the  philosophical 
committee  with  M.  Cousin.  He  was  wonder- 
ful. He  not  only  paid  attention  to  everything, 
but  he  remembered  everything.  At  the  end 
of  a  week,  at  the  end  of  a  fortnight,  ideas, 
distinctions,  tones,  gestures,  style,  hesitations, 
were  all  present  to  him.  The  day's  work  of 
the  members  of  the  committee  was  not  over 
when  the  candidates  were  through;  they  re- 
mained in  session  to  compare  notes,  to  discuss 
matters.  There  was  renewed  discussion,  and 
8 


H4  Victor  Cousin. 

often  a  very  long  discussion  after  each  series 
of  examinations.  The  committee  often  took 
more  than  a  day  for  it.  The  correction  of 
the  written  compositions  might  last  a  month 
or  more  when  the  competitors  were  very 
numerous ;  but  generally  there  were  not  more 
than  seven  or  eight  of  them.  The  reader 
will  readily  believe  that  M.  Cousin  was  im- 
patient of  contradiction;  yet  he  was  obliged 
to  reckon  with  such  colleagues  as  Jouffroy, 
Damiron,  Frederic  Cuvier,  and  even  Cardaillac, 
whose  substitute  he  had  been  at  the  Bourbon 
College,  and  who  remained  faithful  to  M.  La 
Romiguiere.  Though  Cousin  knew  how  to 
bend  and  flatter,  he  knew  not  how  to  yield ; 
and  it  was  but  seldom  that  he  bent  and  flat- 
tered. He  delighted,  nay,  exulted  in  attack. 
He  also  had  recourse  to  raillery,  of  which  he 
was  a  master.  From  any  dispute  with  him 
one  came  out  wounded;  for  the  alternative 
was  either  utterly  to  break  with  him  or  to 
obey.  On  the  whole,  his  will  was  sovereign 
in  the  fellowship  committee  as  well  as  in 
the  Normal  School. 

I  have  said  that  he  remembered  everything 
while  the  competitive  examination  lasted.  He 
remembered  everything  twenty,  yes,  thirty 
years  after.  His  memory  was  implacable. 
This  was  one  reason  why  he  was  so  much  to  be 


His  Regiment.  115 

dreaded.  He  often  disregarded,  he  sometimes 
pardoned,  he  never  forgot,  either  an  excellence 
or  a  defect,  either  an  offence  or  a  merit. 

After  having  surmounted  this  terrible  bar- 
rier of  the  fellowship  examination,  we  re- 
mained under  his  control  as  professors.  He 
could  keep  us  at  Paris  or  send  us  to  the  end 
of  the  world ;  make  one  of  us  full  professor, 
and  condemn  another  to  endless  service  as  a 
substitute, — that  is,  to  poverty.  He  sometimes 
played  such  tricks,  not  out  of  any  ill-will,  but 
because  he  liked  to  struggle  and  to  witness 
struggles.  When  I  began  to  supply  his  place 
at  the  Sorbonne  in  1839,  he  fixed  my  salary  at 
one  thousand  francs  a  year,  that  is,  eighty-three 
francs l  a  month.  He  knew,  beyond  a  doubt, 
that  I  had  nothing  else  in  the  world,  and  this 
circumstance  delighted  him.  "  Simon  will  pull 
through,"  said  he.  I  lived  up  six  flights,  in  an 
attic  looking  on  the  square  before  the  Sorbonne. 
He  said  to  my  classmates  as  they  passed  across 
the  square  with  him,  begging  for  promotion : 
"  Just  look  at  Simon ;  he  is  up  there  in  his  gar- 
ret with  no  fire,  and  never  knows  to-day  whether 
he  will  have  any  dinner  to-morrow." 

1  About  sixteen  dollars.  To  appreciate  this,  one  must 
bear  in  mind  the  fact  that  the  Sorbonne  is  the  French  Oxford, 
and  that  Simon  was  at  that  time  one  of  die  most  accom- 
plished young  men  in  France. — TK. 


n6  Victor  Cousin. 

He  knew  the  name  and  the  record  of  each 
of  his  soldiers.  The  Normal  School  graduates 
had  been  for  three  years  under  his  direct  and 
efficient  oversight.  He  had  examined  most  of 
the  others  for  the  master's  degree,  and  had 
made  a  study  of  them  at  the  competition  for 
fellowships,  —  and  of  some  unlucky  wights 
for  several  years  in  succession.  In  the  case 
of  the  teachers  in  communal  colleges,  —  then 
very  absurdly  called  "  regents,"  but  now  "pro- 
fessors," —  since  they  were  neither  masters 
of  arts  nor  fellows,  he  was  compelled  to  trust 
more  to  the  reports  of  their  rectors  and  in- 
spectors. If  one  of  these  teachers  published 
a  review,  an  edition,  an  article  of  any  moment, 
and  especially  if  he  published  a  book,  Cousin 
at  once  read  it,  or  at  least,  to  use  his  expression, 
scented  it  afar.  If  the  performance  was  worth- 
less, the  man  was  lost ;  if  there  was  any  trace 
of  talent  in  it,  Cousin  became  at  once  his 
tyrant  and  his  protector.  From  that  time  such 
a  person  knew  no  rest  until  he  had  shown  all 
that  was  in  him,  and  had,  in  return,  been  pro- 
vided with  a  position  worthy  of  his  talent  In 
one  way  or  another  there  was  not  a  teacher  in 
a  royal  or  communal  college  —  I  mean  among 
the  teachers  of  philosophy  —  whom  Cousin 
did  not  know  by  heart.  His  memory  rendered 
notes  superfluous.  As  soon  as  a  teacher's 


His  Regiment.  117 

name  was  spoken,  he  could  tell  the  man's  resi- 
dence, history,  degrees  (with  the  date  of  his  ex- 
aminations), his  good  points,  his  defects,  and, 
if  a  writer,  the  list  of  his  books  or  pamphlets ; 
and  all  was  given  with  an  accuracy  of  mem- 
ory and  a  sureness  of  judgment  that  could  not 
be  surpassed. 

It  was  then  the  habit  of  the  professors  of 
philosophy  (and  I  speak  of  no  others)  to  come 
to  Paris  every  year  to  pass  a  portion  of  their 
vacation.  The  young  and  ambitious  came  at 
Easter  also,  that  they  might  be  seen  the  oftener. 
The  first  thing  on  arriving  was  to  call  upon 
Cousin.  The  court  of  the  Sorbonne  swarmed 
with  philosophers.  One  was  sure  of  being 
received ;  one  was  not  sure  of  being  well  re- 
ceived. If  no  thesis  or  paper  had  been  worked 
up,  if  one's  teaching  had  been  negligently  done, 
or  if  one  had  got  into  some  scrape,  —  a  very 
rare  occurrence,  —  one  was  greeted  with  unpar- 
alleled severity.  He  uttered  cutting  remarks, 
as  when  he  said  of  a  man  of  his  rank,  but 
not  of  his  century  (Cousin  was  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  the  other  of  the  twentieth),  "  I 
knew  him  when  he  was  honest  and  common- 
place ;  "  and  of  another,  "  He  is  one  of  those 
to  whom  God  has  said,  'Thou  shalt  never 
see  light ' !  " l  Take  as  another  instance  this 
1  Psalm  xlix.  19. 


1 1 8  Victor  Cousin. 

epitaph  which  he  proposed  for  one  of  his  best 
friends:  "  Here  lies  so  and  so,  who  was  —  ac- 
cording to  Plato's  definition  —  a  dog,  licking 
the  hands  of  his  master,  and  biting  the  legs 
of  all  household  enemies."  I  remember  what 
happened  to  one  of  my  schoolmates,  a  very 
distinguished  man,  titular  professor  in  a  pro- 
vincial faculty.  Cousin  was  then  Minister. 
It  was  at  one  of  his  evening  receptions;  his 
drawing-room  was  full  of  great  people,  —  mem- 
bers of  the  Institute,  peers  of  France,  depu- 
ties, and  likewise  professors,  it  being  then  the 
Easter  vacation.  My  schoolmate  entered,  ea- 
ger and  expectant,  in  his  great-coat,  —  I  fancy 
I  see  him,  —  in  a  dusty  great-coat  dangling 
to  his  heels,  and  with  a  thick  volume  under 
his  arm,  upon  which  he  built  his  hopes  of 
success  and  fame.  He  walked  straight  up  to 
Cousin,  elbowing  everybody  aside,  and  without 
stopping  to  think  that  he  was  interrupting  a 
conversation,  said  in  his  most  sonorous  voice : 
"  Your  Excellency,  here  is  my  book.  You  have 
the  first  copy  of  it.  I  apply  to  you  for  the 

chair  of ,  which  is  vacant."    All  were  silent 

in  order  to  hear  and  see  this  model  pedant. 
"  Sir,"  Cousin  replied,  speaking  louder  than 
he,  "  hand  your  book  to  one  of  the  ushers  in 
my  antechamber.  As  for  yourself,  I  advise 
you  to  think  a  little  more  of  your  intellectual 


His  Regiment.  119 

and  moral  advancement,  and  much  less  of  your 
material  advancement."  These  ratings  were 
only  occasional,  because  the  regiment  kept  well 
in  line;  but  none  felt  secure  from  them,  and 
all  were  in  marching  order. 

Academic  canvasses  were  grand  affairs  for 
him.  He  was  a  power  in  the  French  Academy 
and  in  the  Academy  of  Moral  Sciences.  Be- 
sides the  influence  due  to  his  great  philosophi- 
cal and  literary  merit,  he  had  the  influence  of 
his  eloquence.  Every  election,  in  either  Acad- 
emy, was  preceded  by  a  serious  and  elaborate 
discussion  of  the  qualifications  of  candidates. 
In  this,  Cousin  seldom  failed  to  take  a  leading 
part ;  and  of  course,  before  such  a  select  audi- 
ence, he  exhausted  every  resource.  It  was  a 
grand  thing  to  have  him  for  a  champion ;  to 
have  him  for  an  assailant  was  to  be  lost.  Of 
all  the  men  of  his  time,  he  was  the  greatest 
master  of  scorn.  I  note  in  passing  that  his 
preponderance  in  the  Institute  was  another 
means  of  controlling  his  regiment;  for  there 
was  not  an  officer  in  it  who  did  not  hope  to  be- 
come a  member  of  the  Academy,  nor  a  subal- 
tern who  did  not  long  for  at  least  an  Academic 
prize.  If  he  favored  one's  candidacy,  no  friend 
and  protector  could  be  more  zealous  and  pow- 
erful ;  if  he  repulsed  one,  he  coupled  with  the 
repulse  all  the  annoyances  that  he  could  in- 


I2O  Victor  Cousin. 

vent.  He  seldom  failed,  for  instance,  to  make 
you  swallow  the  eulogy  of  your  rival.  He 
was  impertinent  to  Michelet,  who  detested  him 
and  did  not  hide  it,  and  who  gave  him  as  good 
as  he  sent.  Chance  made  me  a  witness  of  this 
passage  at  arms.  Each  had  a  foeman  worthy 
of  his  steel.  When  M.  Ancelot  called  to  ask 
Cousin's  vote  for  the  French  Academy,  the 
gentleman's  books  were  sent  along  ahead  of 
him.  The  parcel,  all  tied  up,  lay  on  the  table 
when  M.  Ancelot  came  in.  "  You  did  not 
compose  all  that,  did  you?"  asked  M.  Cousin. 
"  Have  you  not  put  in  Madame  Ancelot's 
works,  too?"  "I  own,"  said  the  other,  "that 
I  thought  — "  "It  was  the  best  thing  you 
could  do,"  M.  Cousin  replied.  "  I  shall  not 
vote  for  the  family,"  said  he  to  me  as  soon  as 
M.  Ancelot  had  gone.  "  The  wife  is  a  ridicu- 
lous blue-stocking,  and  the  husband  is  a  fool." 
It  was  not  thus  that  he  treated  Jouffroy,  who 
gave  him  no  chance ;  he  confided  to  me  his 
opinion  on  this  subject.  "  I  don't  know  what 
to  do  about  the  French  Academy,"  he  said 
to  me.  "  I  have  no  one  in  view."  "  Take 
Jouffroy."  "What!  poor  Jouffroy,"  he  re- 
torted, with  his  lordly  gestures ;  "  if  he  heard 
you  he  would  blush  to  the  roots  of  his  hair !  " 

I  could  cite  many  other  instances.     Here  is 
my  own.     I  was  a  candidate  for  the  Academy 


His  Regiment*  121 

of  Moral  and  Political  Sciences,  and  my  can- 
vass was  progressing  very  well,  when  my  for- 
mer teacher,  M.  Gamier,  took  it  into  his  head 
to  present  himself  as  my  competitor.  I  should 
never  have  entered  the  field  against  him,  but 
I  had  not  the  grace  to  withdraw  in  his  favor. 
The  situation  was  very  distressing  to  me.  Dur- 
ing the  two  months  it  lasted,  I  never  once 
went  to  see  M.  Cousin  that  I  was  not  treated 
to  a  eulogy  of  my  competitor;  he  discovered 
new  merits  hi  him  every  day,  for  my  express 
benefit;  and  when  he  had  tortured  me  well 
with  M.  Garnier's  praises,  he  began  to  discuss 
my  poor  books.  It  was  of  no  use  to  tell  him 
that  I  myself  thought  them  of  no  value,  and 
only  asked  that  they  might  be  forgotten;  he 
returned  to  the  attack  every  day,  and  each 
time  with  redoubled  energy.  Does  the  read- 
er imagine  that  in  conclusion  he  advised  me 
to  withdraw?  Quite  the  contrary.  He  enu- 
merated to  me  the  brave  candidates  who  had 
been  four  times  beaten  before  getting  into  the 
sanctuary.  There  was  even  one  colleague  who 
had  presented  himself  six  times.  And  he  actu- 
ally wound  up  by  remarking  that  perseverance 
was  also  a  merit! 

Nowhere  did  M.  Cousin  appear  more  at 
home  than  at  the  examinations  for  the  doctor- 
ate. They  were  then  little  frequented.  Peo- 


122  Victor  Cousin. 

pie  have  learned  the  way  to  them,  since  M. 
Caro,  M.  Janet,  and  their  colleagues  began  to 
vie  at  these  examinations  in  erudition  and  in 
dialectics.  But  at  one  and  the  same  session 
we  could  then  hear  M.  La  Romiguiere,  M. 
Damiron,  M.  Jouffroy,  M.  Cousin.  The  audi- 
ence, which  never  numbered  a  score,  was  com- 
posed of  future  candidates  and  friends  of  the 
candidates.  M.  La  Romiguiere  was  mild  and 
polite,  but  obstinate ;  and  as  he  spoke  the 
language  of  another  school,  we  did  not  al- 
ways understand  him.  He  was  very  old  when 
I  knew  him  (seventy-eight  years  of  age  in 
1834);  and  since  Cousin  incited  us  to  com- 
pose theses  on  the  philosophers  of  ancient 
Greece,  this  aged  scholar,  whose  only  knowl- 
edge of  Plato's  dialogues  was  derived  from 
Father  Grou's  translation,  was  quite  beyond 
his  depth.  The  sole  anxiety  of  Damiron,  the 
poor  dear  master,  with  his  wonted  kindness 
and  modesty,  was  to  display  the  candidate's 
ability.  When  Jouffroy  was  confronted  with 
an  able  candidate  and  a  subject  in  pyschol- 
ogy  or  morals  that  suited  his  taste,  he  argued 
and  spoke  at  length,  with  a  precision,  a  clear- 
ness, an  air  of  firm  and  calm  authority, 
equalled  by  none.  He  was  sometimes  piti- 
less. I  once  heard  him  say  to  a  candidate 
who  had  obliged  him  to  go  over  a  demonstra- 


His  Regiment.  123 

tion  a  second  time,  "Either  you  understand 
this  or  do  not  understand  it;  but  if  you  do 
not  understand  it,  I  am  sorry  for  you."  The 
candidate  was  so  put  out  by  this,  that  after  a 
few  efforts  to  reply  to  the  next  examiner  he 
found  himself  unable  to  collect  his  wits,  and 
withdrew.  Jouffroy  did  not  hesitate  to  avow 
his  own  ignorance  when  the  subject  was  not 
familiar  to  him.  When  I  sustained  my  thesis 
he  said  to  me,  "  I  have  come  to  vote  for  you, 
after  applauding  you,  but  I  am  not  competent 
to  speak  of  the  Alexandrian  school." 

Cousin  believed  himself  competent  to  speak 
of  all  possible  subjects,  and  I  really  think  he 
was  right.  There  was  not  a  subject  in  the 
world  on  which  he  could  not  improvise  a 
brilliant  talk.  Moreover,  he  knew  a  great 
many  things  about  a  great  many  different  sub- 
jects, because  his  mind  was  always  alert,  and 
because  nothing  once  learned  ever  escaped 
him.  If  he  was  pres'ent,  we  knew  that  he 
would  give  a  talk,  and  a  long  one,  —  so  long 
sometimes  that  he  left  no  chance  for  others. 
This  mattered  little  to  him,  for  his  politeness 
was  not  over-refined.  And  besides,  as  he  had 
come  thither  for  himself  and  himself  alone, 
the  audience  had  also  come  for  him  alone. 
He  was  a  good  logician,  but  he  was  especially 
formidable  because  he  had  no  consideration, 


124  Victor  Cousin. 

no  scruples.  The  candidate,  having  often  spent 
a  year  or  two  delving  in  his  subject,  felt  con- 
fident, even  before  Jouffroy,  in  the  strength  of 
his  preparation ;  but  as  soon  as  Cousin  be- 
gan to  speak,  one  felt  at  his  mercy.  He 
wished  either  to  show  off  the  candidate  or  to 
make  him  fail,  —  that  was  at  once  evident,  and 
we  knew  the  event  would  be  as  he  had  de- 
cided. He  did  not,  like  Jouffroy,  give  a  lec- 
ture, but  a  conversation  in  his  own  peculiar 
style;  that  is,  in  a  series  of  monologues. 

I  have  already  said  that  in  conversation 
he  was  unrivalled;  felicitous  expressions,  new 
ideas,  comparisons,  anecdotes,  came  to  his 
mind  in  crowds,  and  he  disposed  them  in  an 
incomparably  free  and  masterly  way.  He 
passed  from  pleasantry  to  emotion,  and  from 
the  greatest  things  to  minutiae,  with  such  ease 
that  it  all  seemed  a  matter  of  course.  We 
could  not  be  bored,  because  the  outlook 
changed  every  minute";  nor  vexed,  because 
there  was  always  profit  in  listening  to  him. 
During  the  operation  the  hearer's  personality 
was  set  at  nought,  but  the  result  was  wonder- 
fully tonic.  He  laid  his -spell  upon  you  like 
an  enchanter ;  and  the  magic  flowed,  not  from 
his  intellect  alone,  for  his  body,  which  was 
thoroughly  under  control,  was  the  peer  of  his 
mind.  His  voice  had  every  tone  at  command, 


His  Regiment.  125 

his  eye  was  laughing  or  terrible,  his  mouth 
eloquent,  his  gestures  slightly  exaggerated, 
yet  without  offending  against  taste;  for  he 
belonged  to  the  school  and  the  company  of 
Plato,  and  never,  even  in  his  boldest  fantasies, 
lost  sight  of  the  golden  mean.  He  had  one 
trait  that  I  have  never  met  with  in  any  other 
talker.  Most  conversers  need  some  kind  of 
an  audience:  Sainte-Beuve's  vein  flowed  only 
among  witty  men  and  pretty  women,  while 
Saint-Marc  Girardin  —  though  I  scarcely  dare 
to  say  so  —  was  most  at  ease  among  pedants ; 
Villemain  needed  a  professor's  chair  or  a  fash- 
ionable gathering;  Cousin  was  ready  any- 
where, on  any  subject,  and  with  any  listener. 
It  mattered  little  to  him  who  his  interlocutor 
was.  Whether  there  was  a  whole  roomful  or 
but  one  person  present,  and  whether  this  per- 
son was  a  wit  or  a  fool,  if  Cousin  was  in  an 
ingenious  and  talkative  humor,  he  pursued  his 
point.  His  actual  audience,  that  is,  the  man 
seated  there  beside  him  wondering  that  Cousin 
should  be  willing  to  take  so  much  trouble  for 
his  sake,  would  have  been  surprised  at  the 
sudden  discovery  that  Cousin  had  forgotten 
all  about  him,  or  regarded  him  as  an  utter 
imbecile. 

I  think   the  eight   months  of  his   ministry 
were  not  the  happiest  of  his  life.     He  was  glad 


126  Victor  Cousin. 

to  put  in  practice  certain  ideas,  the  ripe  fruit 
of  long  reflection;  glad  to  make  some  good 
creations,  of  which  I  shall  speak  presently; 
proud,  too,  of  being  first,  of  being  master,  of 
an  opportunity  to  show  off,  —  for  he  had  such 
weaknesses,  —  proud  to  have  precedence  at 
the  court  and  in  society,  and  no  longer  to  be 
one  notch  below  Villemain ;  for  the  great  and 
the  little,  like  the  good  and  the  bad,  were  in- 
timately blended  in  Cousin.  He  had  long 
desired  this  office,  and  he  delighted  even  in 
its  embellishments.  One  evening  in  the  latter 
part  of  February,  1840,  as  he  was  walking 
with  me  on  Gabriel  Avenue,  he  said,  pointing 
to  the  beautiful  gardens  bordering  one  side 
of  the  avenue,  "  To-morrow,  perhaps,  I  shall 
have  gardens  like  those."  "  Why,"  I  responded, 
"have  you  made  a  fortune?"  "Better  than 
that;  I  am  going  to  be  a  minister.  We  have 
an  appointment  to-night  with  M.  Thiers.  He 
urges  me,  he  insists ;  I  cannot  refuse.  One 
must  go  with  one's  friends  !  "  And  thereupon 
he  began  talking  of  his  "  Plato  "  "  still  unfin- 
ished." But  I  said  to  myself  that  if  his  Plato 
was  the  only  difficulty,  the  Cabinet  was  com- 
plete. The  next  day  he  set  out  on  foot  for 
Grenelle  Street,  whither  his  servant  Louis  had 
sent  by  a  porter  a  trunk  containing  a  few  per- 
sonal effects.  So  easy  was  his  installation ! 


His  Regiment.  127 

These  pettinesses  may  be  related  without 
detracting  from  his  greatness,  for  none  of 
these  things  would  have  checked  him  one 
minute  if  his  honor  had  bidden  him  withdraw. 
He  showed  this  plainly;  it  was  he  who  said 
to  the  king,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Egyptian 
imbroglio,  "  Dismiss  us !  "  I  fancy  that,  while 
enjoying  all  his  dignities,  he  was  cramped  and 
embarrassed  by  them.  On  beginning  a  famil- 
iar talk  with  an  old  acquaintance,  he  would 
suddenly  stop  for  fear  of  compromising  his 
dignity.  When  he  took  a  pen  to  sign  pa- 
pers, he  would  be  seized  by  a  sudden  desire  to 
write  a  page  on  Jacqueline  Pascal.  Once  he 
occupied  his  old  chair  at  the  Sorbonne,  but 
only  to  preside  at  the  award  of  the  prizes  in 
the  General  Competition,  and  to  read  a  writ- 
ten discourse.  What  a  sad  contrast  with  the 
past! 

He  displayed  great  activity  during  his  min- 
istry, and  yet  made  no  great  revolutions.  He 
had  been  too  intimately  associated  with  the 
administration  of  his  predecessors  to  need  to 
repair  the  house;  he  was  like  an  old  tenant 
coming  into  possession  of  the  property.  He 
found  everything  where  he  himself  had  put  it. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  it  was  only  in 
what  relates  to  philosophy  that  the  Minister 
found  his  way  made  smooth  by  the  Councillor. 


128  Victor  Cousin. 

To  think  so  would  be  to  mistake  our  man ;  for 
it  was  Cousin's  habit  to  interfere  in  everything. 
He  would  have  permitted  no  one  to  meddle 
with  his  regiment,  but  he  himself  liked  to  med- 
dle with  other  people's  regiments.  Were  I  to 
be  informed  that  he  had  a  battle  with  M. 
Thenard  about  chemistry,  I  should  not  be  sur- 
prised. Moreover,  he  was  extremely  well-versed 
in  certain  matters  foreign  to  his  specialty. 

Although  he  had  been  director  of  the  phi- 
losophical faculty,  he  was  far  from  being  a 
stranger  to  primary  instruction,  —  a  depart- 
ment which,  since  M.  Guizot's  time,  had  been 
one  of  the  most  important.  He  had  helped 
to  draw  up  the  law  of  1833,  and  claimed  its 
paternity,  which  must,  however,  be  attributed 
to  M.  Guizot.  Cousin  wrote  the  law  accord- 
ing to  M.  Guizot's  suggestions  and  subject 
to  his  orders.  It  is  none  the  less  true  that 
Cousin  wrote  it,  and  that  even  the  statement 
of  reasons  is  by  his  hand.  He  had  long  had 
competent  knowledge  of  the  matter,  having 
been  intrusted  with  various  educational  mis- 
sions to  Germany  and  Holland,  which  gave 
rise  to  reports  very  full  of  facts  and  ideas. 
Accordingly  he  had  no  changes  to  make  in 
the  law  of  1833.  One  of  his  plans  was  to 
develop  the  higher  primary  schools.  If  time 
had  not  failed  him,  he  would  have  given  these 


His  Regiment.  129 

schools  very  great  importance ;  for  he  rightly 
thought  that  while  primary  schools  train  the 
workmen,  while  colleges  train  the  learned  and 
literary  classes,  there  must  be  intermediate 
schools,  or  higher  primary  schools,  to  train 
foremen,  accountants,  small  employers.  It  was 
much  the  same  thought  that  later  on  caused 
the  creation  of  special  secondary  instruction ; 
only,  in  1840,  the  industries  not  being  devel- 
oped as  in  our  day,  the  industrial  chiefs  de- 
manded less,  and  had  fewer  intellectual  needs, 
so  that  the  higher  primary  schools  sufficed 
them. 

Cousin  thought  there  were  three  disadvan- 
tages in  replacing  these  schools  by  poor  col- 
leges :  that  of  failing  to  give  the  lower  mid- 
dle classes  the  instruction  they  need;  that 
of  giving  incapable  persons  instruction  which 
they  do  not  comprehend,  inflating  them  with 
pride,  and  supplying  them  with  no  resources ; 
lastly,  that  of  lowering  the  standard  of  literary 
instruction  in  our  colleges,  —  a  standard  that 
could  evidently  be  raised,  were  such  instruc- 
tion reserved  for  a  chosen  few.  To  give  the 
masses  that  instruction  only  which  is  indis- 
pensable, but  to  give  it  plentifully  to  the 
whole  people ;  to  give  the  middle  classes  posi- 
tive, practical  instruction,  teaching  only  useful 
things  ;'  on  the  other  hand,  to  push  intellectual 
9 


130  Victor  Cousin. 

culture  as  far  as  possible  in  the  schools  re- 
served for  the  upper  classes  and  for  choice 
spirits,  —  such  is  the  general  plan  that  gives 
consistency  to  the  orders,  decisions,  circulars, 
programmes,  emanating  from  him. 

The  higher  grades  of  instruction,  the  facul- 
ties, the  College  of  France,  the  great  schools, 
called  especially  for  his  efforts.  He  hastened 
to  create  in  connection  with  the  literary  and 
scientific  faculties  a  corps  of  fellows,  who  were 
to  serve  as  assistants  and  substitutes  to  the 
full  professors.  This  was  the  introduction 
into  France  of  the  German  system  of  Privat- 
docenten.  From  this  corps  of  fellows  has  been 
evolved  the  present  corps  of  lecturers  \inaitres 
de  conference^,  with  the  difference  that  they 
are  now  appointed  directly,  whereas  Cousin 
had  them  qualify  by  competitive  examination, 
thus  assimilating  the  management  of  the  liter- 
ary and  scientific  faculties  to  that  of  the  facul- 
ties of  law  and  medicine. 

One  of  his  great  projects  was  to  have  uni- 
versity towns,  after  the  manner  of  Germany, 
where  Jena,  Gottingen,  Heidelberg,  and  so 
many  other  towns,  are  rivals  in  learning  and 
fame.  So  likewise  in  France,  he  wished  to  mul- 
tiply centres  of  intellectual  activity,  to  create  a 
collection  of  faculties  in  the  chief  towns  of  the 
old  French  provinces.  An  isolated  literary  fac- 


His  Regiment.  131 

ulty  has  not  even  an  audience ;  add  besides  a 
law  school  and  a  medical  school,  and  the  whole 
will  flourish.  When  he  formed  this  project,  so 
excellent  in  itself,  he  forgot  that  if  Rennes  and 
Lyons  possess  the  necessary  requisites  to  be- 
come .  great  centres  of  intellectual  effort  like 
Jena  or  Gottingen,  yet  our  great  towns  have  to 
submit  to  the  overwhelming  preponderance  of 
Paris.  Germany  was  then  divided  into  petty 
states,  and  even-  Berlin,  compared  with  Paris, 
was  but  a  small  town. 

To  Cousin  belongs  the  initiative  in  the  re- 
form of  higher  education.  Time  failed  him, 
not  ideas.  He  was  still  full  of  plans  when  he 
left  office,  and  yet  he  had  not  ceased  to  toil  and 
to  produce.  Other  ministries  of  longer  dura- 
tion have  done  more;  not  one  has  done  so 
much  in  a  time  so  limited.  For  all  his  acts 
he  eagerly  courted  publicity.  Damiron  said  to 
him,  "  You  make  too  much  noise."  Cousin 
looked  him  straight  in  the  eye  without  reply- 
ing, and  began  his  racket  again.  He  kept  up 
the  noise  about  his  ministry  even  after  his  fall, 
since  he  took  upon  himself  to  write  the  history 
of  the  great  things  he  had  done. 

He  had  been  obliged  after  much  hesitation 
to  name  a  successor  in  his  regiment, — that  is, 
to  appoint  a  Royal  Councillor  who  should  have 
charge  of  philosophical  instruction.  He  chose 


132  Victor  Cousin. 

Jouffroy,  as  he  could  not  help  doing;  he  had 
not  thought  for  a  moment  of  any  other  choice. 
Jouffroy  was  not  a  lieutenant-colonel ;  he  was 
fairly  and  squarely  a  colonel,  so  that  Cousin 
had  lost  by  his  promotion  the  power  he  prized 
most.  In  what  condition  would  he  find  his 
regiment  on  retiring  from  the  ministry;  and 
the  Normal  School ;  and  his  library,  another 
sharer  in  his  affections?  I  am  sure  that  when 
he  passed  through  the  Rue  du  Bac  in  his  car- 
riage on  his  way  to  dine  with  the  king,  he 
sometimes  regretted  the  evening  walks  we  had 
been  wont  to  take  together  through  these  same 
streets  and  the  Rue  Saint-Jacques ;  for  we  used 
to  take  what  we  called  a  turn  around  the  square, 
each  of  us  —  peer  of  France  and  pedagogue  — 
having  in  his  pocket  two  sous'  worth  of  roasted 
chestnuts  which  we  munched  in  the  face  of  the 
passers-by,  who  little  thought  they  were  elbow 
to  elbow  with  one  of  the  greatest  writers  of  the 
land. 

At  last  he  fell.  The  dream  had  lasted  but 
eight  months.  It  was  a  hard  fall,  especially 
at  first,  because  all  was  now  lost,  —  both  his 
empire  and  his  regiment.  He  declared  that  he 
was  reduced  to  live  by  shifts.  He  had  taken 
back  from  me,  of  course,  the  salary  of  full  pro- 
fessor which  I  had  enjoyed  for  a  whole  trimes- 
ter ;  but  the  Councillor's  place,  which  Jouffroy 


His  Regiment.  133 

did  not  offer  to  return  to  him,  was  worth  twelve 
thousand  francs  a  year.  The  loss  of  this  twelve 
thousand  francs  embarrassed  him.  Every  even- 
ing he  took  me  into  his  confidence,  —  and  for 
such  grievances  I  was  a  strangely  chosen  confi- 
dant. His  laments  were  so  long  and  loud  that 
they  even  reached  the  king's  ears.  The  king 
liked  him,  and  did  not  think  it  right  that  one 
of  his  former  ministers  should  be  pinched  for 
money.  He  spoke  of  it  to  M.  de  Rothschild, 
and  the  latter  at  once  offered  Cousin  a  place  on 
a  railway  board.  But  let  Cousin's  opponents, 
wont  to  declaim  against  his  avarice,  consider  his 
course :  he  unhesitatingly  refused.  "  It  is  no 
place  for  a  member  of  the  Academy,"  he  said. 
Nothing  could  indemnify  him  for  that  place 
in  the  Royal  Council.  Its  emoluments  were  a 
great  attraction,  its  authority  a  far  greater  one. 
Though  he  spoke  to  me  with  sadness  of  his 
library,  to  which  he  could  no  longer  devote  six 
thousand  francs  every  year,  yet  he  spoke  much 
more  of  the  innovations  introduced  into  his 
regiment.  To  do  him  justice,  the  twelve  thou- 
sand francs  were  as  nothing  compared  with 
these  innovations,  which  to  him  were  heart- 
breaking. "  Jouffroy  is  a  worthy  man,  he  is  my 
friend.  A  great  mind  if  you  will,  even  a  phi- 
losopher ;  a  successor  to  Dugald  Stewart,  a 
shade  narrower  than  his  master.  But  this  last 


134  Victor  Cousin, 

circular !  .  .  .  "  To  cap  the  climax,  the  regi- 
ment countenanced  it  all,  turned  its  back  on 
the  Eleatics  and  the  Alexandrian  school,  de- 
voted itself  wholly  to  psychology.  "  What 
would  Schleiermacher  say?" 

Early  in  1842  Jouffroy  died.  Cousin  could 
re-enter  the  Royal  Council.  Upon  his  return 
everything  and  everybody  were  so  fresh  in  his 
mind  that  it  seemed  to  him  he  had  sat  in  the 
Council  the  day  before.  He  was  persuaded 
that  to  the  very  heart  of  Germany  there  would 
be  joy  at  his  return.  In  France  —  that  is,  in 
French  colleges  —  sentiments  were  divided. 
Jouffroy  had  almost  as  many  friends,  and  he 
had  much  fewer  enemies,  —  or  rather  he  had 
none.  On  the  whole,  there  ought  to  have  been 
no  hesitation  between  the  master  and  his  dis- 
ciple. Jouffroy  had  neither  the  unwearied  ac- 
tivity, nor  the  alertness  of  wit,  nor  the  breadth 
of  view,  nor  the  varied  knowledge,  nor  the 
boundless  devotion  to  his  work  and  his  mission, 
which  made  Cousin  an  incomparable  director. 
I  thought  sometimes  that  he  should  have  been 
born  in  the  fifteenth  century,  to  be  Abbot- 
General  of  Citeaux  or  Cluny.  Perhaps  he 
might  have  stirred  up  the  Church,  though  I  do 
not  think  so ;  but  he  would  surely  have  adorned 
it  by  his  own  labors  and  by  those  of  his  disci- 
ples. Certain  it  is  that  the  University,  and  uni- 


His  Regiment.  135 

versity  instruction  in  philosophy,  could  desire 
no  more  skilful  defender,  no  master  more  capa- 
ble and  devoted ;  I  do  not  say  more  gentle. 

He  was  much  complained  of,  as  the  all-pow- 
erful always  are.  He  was  severe  with  others 
because  he  was  severe  with  himself.  His  se- 
verities were  often  a  proof  of  esteem.  Had  he 
not  set  some  store  by  me,  he  would  not  have 
exposed  me  to  die  of  hunger.  This  is  what  I 
sometimes  think  when  I  reproach  myself  with 
not  being  so  grateful  to  him  as  I  ought  to  have 
been.  He  was  beset  by  two  desires :  to  be 
just,  and  to  give  talent  an  opportunity  to  dis- 
play itself.  Though  I  call  up  all  the  acts  of  his 
administration,  I  find  not  one  to  disprove  his 
love  of  justice  and  his  devotion  to  rising  talent. 
He  sometimes  turned  against  his  creatures 
when  their  talents  had  been  trained  and  had 
grown  brilliant.  I  am  quite  sure  that  before 
he  became  afraid  of  Jouffroy,  Cousin  loved 
him  tenderly,  and  even  when  jealous  of  him, 
loved  him  still.  Cousin  loved  in  his  own  way, 
which  was  neither  very  sentimental  nor  very 
deep.  An  appointment  to  make  in  some  ob- 
scure college,  when  there  were  several  candi- 
dates whose  merits  were  evenly  balanced,  was 
to  him  a  great  affair.  In  the  case  of  an  impor- 
tant post,  a  chair  in  a  great  royal  college,  — 
abov.e  all  if  the  chair  was  at  Paris,  —  he  thought 


136  Victor  Cousin. 

of  nothing  elsex  and  would  allow  the  matter  to 
worry  and  wear  upon  him.  His  decision  was 
always  based  on  the  best  of  reasons.  His  choice 
once  made,  he  was  sorry  for  the  rejected  candi- 
date, but  only  on  condition  that  the  victim  kept 
out  of  his  sight ;  for  if  the  unhappy  man  ven- 
tured to  present  himself,  Cousin  would  bully  and 
terrify  him.  One  would  have  said  that  some 
evil  genius  had  condemned  Cousin  to  make 
himself  misunderstood. 

Yet  he  must  have  been  fitted  to  please,  for 
he  satisfied  himself.  Great  men  are  said  never 
to  be  satisfied  with  what  they  have  done.  If 
this  be  true,  it  is  true  of  petty  great  men,  — 
great  men  of  the  second  class.  I  have  always 
seen  truly  great  men  contented  with  themselves. 
I  think  this  is  the  sentiment  Michelet  speaks 
of,  when  he  says  that  great  men  have  joy. 
Cousin  had  the  joy  of  knowing  his  own  worth ; 
he  felt  himself  necessary.  One  day,  a  year  or 
two  before  1848,  I  met  Pierre  Leroux,  who 
began  a  tirade  against  the  eclectics.  "How- 
ever," he  said  to  me,  "  the  whole  structure 
will  fall  with  Cousin.  When  Cousin  disap- 
pears, your  whole  gang  of  professors  and 
your  whole  school  will  disappear  with  him." 
I  was  boiling  over  with  rage  after  this  con- 
versation, for  I  did  not  think  we  were  of  so 
little  account.  I  repeated  the  conversation 


His  Regiment.  1 3  7 

to  Cousin  as  he  was  Breakfasting  on  bread  and 
honey.  "  Leroux  is  right,"  he  calmly  replied, 
eating  away  at  the  slice  he  had  spread.  I  beg 
the  reader  to  believe  that  he  was  not  always  so 
discouraging. 

He  admired  thn_e  things  in  his  time:  the 
Charter, 1  whose  place  in  his  thoughts  was  after- 
ward taken  by  the  July  Monarchy ;  the  philoso- 
phy of  Schelling  and  Hegel,  which  he  thought 
that  he  had  brought  to  perfection ;  and  the 
Royal  Council,  of  which  his  department  was  the 
best  conducted  and  the  best  disciplined.  Of 
course  I  mean  the  old,  the  true,  the  great  Royal 
Council,  as  it  was  under  Guizot,  Villemain, 
and  Cousin, —  in  a  word,  the  Council  of  Eight. 
M.  de  Salvandy,  under  the  pretext  of  making 
it  greater,  disgraced  it  by  the  introduction  of 
incompetent  persons.  At  least,  such  was  the 
opinion  of  Cousin,  who  was  exasperated  by  this 
pretended  reform.  It  seemed  to  him  that  M.  de 
Salvandy  had  touched  the  sacred  ark.  When 
M.  Duruy  was  appointed  minister  of  public  in- 
struction, it  occurred  to  him  to  visit  two  or 
three  of  the  great  university  men  of  Paris.  He 
did  not  omit  to  go  and  see  Cousin  at  the  Sor- 
bonne.  "  What  would  you  lay  most  stress 
upon,"  said  Duruy  after  a  long  conversation, 

1  La  Charte  constitottionelle,  granted  by  Louis  XVIII.  in 
1814.  — TR. 


1 38  Victor  Cousin. 

"  if  you  were  in  my  place?  "  Cousin  rested  his 
chin  on  his  hand  and  reflected  deeply  for  sev- 
eral minutes.  Then,  suddenly  starting  from  his 
reverie,  he  answered  impressively,  "  I  should 
restore  the  Council  of  Eight." 

The  results  obtained  by  Cousin  during  his 
reign  of  more  than  twenty  years  were  consid- 
erable. In  the  first  place  he  trained  a  body 
of  professors  of  distinction,  learning,  circum- 
spection, who  opened  minds  without  disturbing 
them,  and  whose  teaching,  coming  at  the  close 
of  the  whole  course  of  literary  studies,  gave  it 
light  and  completeness.  To  thoroughly  appre- 
ciate the  service  thus  rendered  to  philosophy 
and  to  culture,  it  is  necessary  to  know  what 
philosophical  instruction  was  from  1810,  the 
date  of  its  reinstatement  in  the  University, 
up  to  1831,  when  M.  Cousin  took  office.  M. 
Royer-Collard  had  arranged  things  somewhat, 
but  the  amount  of  it  was  that  logic  was  taught 
in  Latin,  from  an  anonymous  collection  called 
"The  Lyons  Philosophy;  "  some  declamations 
were  delivered  about  God  and  the  destiny  of 
the  soul;  some  pages  were  read  from  Des- 
cartes or  Fenelon  or  La  Romiguiere.  Ex- 
cept for  the  logic,  which  was  barbarous,  all 
this  was  but  a  rather  advanced  course  in 
rhetoric,  wherein  French  appeared  as  a  lowly 
handmaid  behind  Latin,  the  reigning  tongue. 


His  Regiment.  139 

M.  Cousin  put  in  fellows  everywhere,  restored 
French  to  its  place,  imposed  a  uniform  pro- 
gramme and  had  it  adopted  even  in  the  hum- 
blest colleges.  M.  Janet  remarks  that  this 
programme  prescribes  the  questions  and  does 
not  prescribe  their  solutions.  This  is  true, 
and  was  necessary  to  secure  the  acceptance 
of  the  programme.  Moreover,  since  the  same 
'programme  served  for  the  classes  and  for  the 
baccalaureate,  there  could  be  no  such  thing  as 
insisting  in  the  name  of  the  state  upon  philo- 
sophic orthodoxy  in  the  examinations.  Thus 
no  system  was  imposed,  the  sole  understanding 
being  that  professors  should  everywhere  teach 
the  existence  of  God,  his  providence,  the  spirit- 
uality and  immortality  of  the  soul,  free  will, 
duty.  If  a  professor  had  hesitated  about  one 
of  these  points,  he  would  at  once  have  felt 
M.  Cousin's  hand  upon  him.  Nor  do  I  blame 
M.  Cousin  for  this.  Neutrality  of  instruction 
had  not  yet  been  invented ;  everybody  believed 
in  those  days  —  and,  thank  Heaven !  I  still  con- 
tinue to  believe  —  that  there  is  no  difference 
between  neutral  teaching  and  no  teaching  at  all. 
Another  point  gained  by  M.  Cousin  was 
that  every  professor  should  take  up  a  task  of 
his  own,  —  the  study  of  a  question  in  psychol- 
ogy or  metaphysics,  the  translation  or  annota- 
tion of  an  ancient  philosopher,  the  rescue  from 


140  Victor  Cousin. 

oblivion  of  a  slighted  work  or  doctrine.  A 
few  old  men  were  allowed  to  end  their  careers 
in  forgetfulness ;  but  all  the  young  University 
men  were  at  work.  The  Academies  had 
crowns  only  for  them.  Were  I  composing  a 
eulogy  on  M.  Cousin  instead  of  painting  his 
portrait,  I  should  place  beside  his  own  works 
the  list  of  those  he  incited  others  to  make,  and 
the  two  lists  would  reflect  equal  glory  upon  him ; 
for  he  deemed  it  not  enough  to  give  his  profes- 
sors a  taste  for  work,  he  was  always  ready  to 
point  out  sources,  to  throw  out  ideas,  even  to 
read  manuscripts  and  show  how  they  must  be 
recast  in  order  to  fit  them  for  publication.  He 
was,  for  France,  a  sort  of  universal  professor. 

M.  Janet  asserts  that  he  was  the  head  of  a 
school,  and  that  at  the  same  time  he  left  the 
professors  of  the  University  free  in  their  in- 
struction. I  dispute  both  assertions.  He  had 
few  disciples,  and  even  they  dissented  from  him 
in  many  respects.  His  own  system  was  neither 
conceived  with  enough  power,  nor  adhered  to 
with  enough  perseverance,  to  found  a  school. 
With  seeming  inconsistency  he  regarded  all  the 
professors  of  philosophy  as  called  to  preach  in 
his  name.  Why  did  he  give  a  course  in  the 
third  year  at  the  Normal  School?  In  order  to 
fill  the  young  teachers  with  his  spirit.  He  in- 
dicated very  clearly  what  books  of  his  they 


His  Regiment.  141 

were  to  take  as  the  basis  of  their  instruction. 
He  obtained  information  from  the  inspectors- 
general,  and  when  a  recalcitrant  or  wavering 
professor  came  to  Paris,  he  was  received  and 
treated  according  to  his  deserts. 

M.  Damiron,  like  M.  Janet,  extols  the  great 
freedom  which  M.  Cousin  vouchsafed  his  pu- 
pils. I  really  think  that  Damiron  and  his 
friends,  being  the  pupils  at  the  Normal  School 
of  their  former  schoolmate,  who  was  teach- 
ing philosophy  before  he  had  a  philosophy 
to  teach,  were  not  subjected  to  a  very  strict 
discipline.  It  was  different  a  few  years  later. 
We  were  free  only  in  name.  We  were  free  to 
break  our  necks. 

Let  M.  Janet  inquire  of  our  two  colleagues, 
Messrs.  Waddington  and  Hatzfeld.  When  the 
February  Revolution  came  to  put  an  end  to 
Cousin's  sway,  they  were  occupied  in  making 
under  his  direction  an  Elementary  Handbook 
of  Philosophy,  which  contained  nothing  but 
passages  from  different  books  of  his,  well  dove- 
tailed together  so  as  to  constitute  a  regular, 
complete,  and  irreproachable  system.  This 
handbook  was  to  be  officially  authorized  and 
officiously  imposed.  Philosophy  would  then 
have  its  catechism ;  it  already  had  its  bishop. 

How  could  professors  be  free  under  a  chief 
who  had  been  their  master  at  the  Normal 


142  Victor  Cousin. 

School,  and  their  judge  at  the  fellowship  ex- 
amination, who  was  their  hope  for  the  Acade- 
my, who  did  not  take  his  eyes  off  them  for  an 
instant,  who  was  informed  of  all  they  said,  who 
read  all  they  wrote,  who  was  invested  with  the 
most  absolute  control  over  their  whole  career? 
As  for  himself,  how  could  he  be  liberal  in  the 
position  in  which  he  was  placed?  He  wished 
to  be  liberal.  He  was  one  of  those  liberals 
who  say,  "  I  am  philosophy !  "  Never  could 
Hegel,  Leibnitz,  or  Descartes  have  dreamed  of 
such  despotic  authority.  France  had  intrusted 
philosophical  instruction  to  his  hands,  and  I 
can  bear  witness  that  these  hands  were  as  firm 
as  they  were  powerful. 

There  remained  two  professors  at  Paris  de- 
voted to  La  Romiguiere's  doctrine,  —  Messrs. 
Valette  and  Safary.  It  was  well  for  them  that 
they  were  full  professors  and  had  no  ambi- 
tion either  in  the  direction  of  the  University 
or  in  that  of  the  Academy.  When  M.  Thiers 
brought  in  the  law  with  reference  to  secondary 
instruction,  M.  Safary  ran  to  him  to  complain 
of  M.  Cousin's  despotism.  Said  M.  Thiers  to 
me:  "  I  berated  him!"  Oddly  enough  when 
M.  Thiers  took  to  writing  philosophy,  he  came 
nearer  to  La  Romiguiere  —  and  hence  to  Sa- 
fary—  than  he  did  to  Cousin.  As  for  Valette, 
he  was  urged  to  accept  a  substitute.  "  He  will 


His  Regiment.  143 

supply  your  place  for  twelve  hundred  francs." 
It  was  a  very  tempting  proposal,  but  Valette 
held  out  What  was  done  about  it?  The 
would-be  substitute  was  appointed  to  lecture 
to  the  class.  The  person  selected  was  a 
young  fellow  fresh  from  the  Normal  School,  of 
kindly  character  and  fluent  speech.  M.  Octave 
Feuillet,  who  was  then  a  student  in  philosophy 
at  the  College  of  Louis  the  Great,  may  remem- 
ber him.  The  pupils  were  given  to  understand 
that  if  they  would  have  prizes  at  the  General 
Competition,  and  white  balls  for  the  baccalau- 
reate, they  must  hearken  to  the  assistant  and 
turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  professor. 

This  control  was  very  strict;  the  professors 
were  humiliated  by  it  They  were  especially 
distressed  by  the  narrow  limits  to  which  their 
teaching  was  confined.  Cousin  wished  the 
University  to  be  irreproachable,  because  he 
saw  that  it  was  very  severely  attacked.  The 
professors  did  not  see  the  danger  as  clearly 
as  he  did,  and  left  to  him  the  responsibility 
of  averting  it.  But  at  this  point  Cousin's 
purely  administrative  work  terminates.  We 
are  trenching  upon  his  political  work,  which 
must  be  studied  separately. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

HIS   BATTLES. 

THE  philosopher  who  seeks  truth  in  the 
retirement  of  his  study  has  a  task  involv- 
ing little  solicitude.  He  advances  toward  his 
goal  by  whatever  path  seems  most  direct,  and, 
having  discovered  truth,  he  makes  it  known 
unreservedly,  with  no  care  but  to  be  exact  in 
research  and  clear  in  statement. 

In  the  times  of  state  religions  and  absolute 
states,  philosophers  were  beset  by  a  different 
anxiety;  for  by  speaking  the  truth  they  might 
put  liberty  and  life  at  stake.  The  boldest 
braved  all  and  died  like  heroes.  Others  en- 
deavored to  mislead  the  enemy  by  modifying 
or  hiding  their  real  thoughts,  and,  in  order  to 
be  free  to  say  at  least  something,  kept  some- 
thing back.  Others,  again,  sought  through  the 
world  for  a  land  where  a  man  was  free  to  be  in 
the  right.  Such  was  the  course  of  Descartes, 
although  he  was  not  wanting  in  courage. 

The  teaching  of  philosophy  in  educational 
institutions  inevitably  raises,  besides  philosoph- 


His  Battles.  145 

ical  problems,  a  problem  in  politics.  Let  us 
first  set  aside  as  ignoble  the  thought  of  teach- 
ing what  one  does  not  believe,  or  of  teaching 
what  one  doubts  as  certain.  It  is  plain  that  in 
order  to  give  instruction  which  includes  mo- 
rality and  in  all  its  parts  declares  for  morality, 
one  must  have  an  upright  heart  and  a  firm 
mind ;  but  there  is  still  room  to  inquire  whether 
every  doctrine  is  fit  to  teach  children. 

Do  I,  the  father,  when  I  wish  to  have  my 
son  taught  philosophy,  mean  to  say  that  he 
shall  be  taught  a  materialistic  or  a  spiritualistic 
philosophy  as  the  professor  pleases ;  that  it  mat- 
ters little  to  me  whether  he  is  taught  to  believe 
in  God  or  not  to  believe  in  Him,  whether  he  is 
made  a  Christian  or  an  enemy  to  Christianity? 
It  is  manifest  that  if  I  am  thus  indifferent  to 
the  solution  of  questions,  I  must  prefer  that 
there  be  no  questions  raised.  The  philosophy 
I  desire  for  my  son  is  not  any  philosophy  what- 
ever; it  is  a  certain  definite  philosophy.  At 
Paris,  where  there  are  several  colleges,  I  can 
make  my  choice,  after  finding  out  what  the 
master  teaches.  But  there  may  be  cases  where 
the  choice  is  limited  to  these  two  alternatives : 
either  no  teaching,  or  wrong  teaching.  The 
choice  of  a  man  of  sense  cannot  be  doubtful ; 
he  will  answer,  "  No  teaching." 

So  much  for  the  father.     But  what  will  the 


146  Victor  Cousin. 

state  do,  that  furnishes  the  instruction?  Shall 
we  affirm  in  the  case  of  the  state  what  we  deny 
in  the  case  of  the  father,  and  say  that  the  state 
desires  philosophical  instruction,  no  matter 
what  the  philosophy  taught?  If  the  state  is  so 
indifferent  as  this,  what  right  has  it  to  interfere 
with  giving  and  regulating  instruction?  There 
has  been  invented  of  late,  out  of  respect  for 
atheists,  a  sort  of  primary  training  which  is 
neutral,  that  is  to  say,  null, —  in  other  words,  a 
primary  training  that  includes  not  one  philo- 
sophical notion ;  for  let  philosophy  enter  under 
any  form  whatever,  then  farewell  neutrality, 
since  philosophy  is,  by  definition,  a  body  of 
doctrine.  The  state,  then,  must  teach  some- 
thing, if  it  teaches  philosophy;  and  what,  pray, 
shall  it  teach?  Shall  its  instruction  be  material- 
istic or  spiritualistic  ;  atheistic  or  deistic?  Shall 
it  take  a  young  teacher  of  good  moral  charac- 
ter, provided  with  university  degrees,  and  say 
to  him,  "  Here  is  a  thousand  dollars,  teach  what 
you  please"?  A  pretty  situation  that  of  the 
father  who  either  never  knew,  or  does  not  now 
know,  a  word  of  philosophy,  if  obliged  to  make 
an  inquiry  into  the  doctrines  of  the  teacher 
before  intrusting  his  son  to  him,  to  follow  the 
teaching  afterward  to  find  out  whether  it  is 
modified  in  any  respect,  and  to  withdraw  his 
son  abruptly  if  the  professor  be  replaced  in  the 


His  Battles.  147 

course  of  the  year  by  a  man  of  different  opin- 
ions ;  and  no  less  odd  would  be  the  situation  of 
a  state  displaying  among  its  wares  doctrines 
from  every  source,  and  offering  them  to  the 
public  without  inspection,  at  the  risk  of  selling 
nothing  but  poison ! 

In  the  time  of  Hobbes,  which  is  a  very  remote 
time,  and  in  the  time  of  Le  Pelletier,  Saint- 
Fargeau,  and  Robespierre,  which  is  a  time 
nearer  to  our  own,  the  state  entirely  took  the 
place  of  the  father.  Its  more  than  enormous 
pretension  was  to  bring  up  the  children  accord- 
ing to  the  will  of  the  state,  and  not  according 
to  the  will  of  their  fathers.  The  state,  I  say ; 
but  what  kind  of  a  state?  A  state  with  doc- 
trines. These  doctrines,  whatever  they  were, 
were  the  cloak  of  despotism ;  for  rulers  had  not 
at  that  time  conceived  the  idea  of  oppression 
in  the  name  of  nothing.  The  neutral  school 
imposed  by  the  state  is  an  invention  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  will  be  its  glory. 

When  M.  Cousin  was  at  college,  the  question 
was  summarily  disposed  of.  The  Imperial  Uni- 
versity, by  virtue  of  its  constitution,  took  as 
the  basis  of  its  instruction  the  Catholic  religion, 
which  amounts  to  saying  that  the  Catholic  re- 
ligion was  the  state  religion  for  the  University. 
When  Cousin  began  to  teach  in  the  Sorbonne, 
France  was  under  the  Restoration ;  there  was, 


148  Victor  Cousin. 

then,  a  state  religion  not  only  for  the  University 
but  for  the  nation.  The  state,  having  a  religion, 
imposed  it  upon  its  teachers,  who  imposed  it 
upon  their  pupils.  There  was  no  room  for 
freedom.  There  were  no  schools  but  state 
schools.  Private  instruction  existed  only  by 
state  authorization,  and  under  state  surveil- 
lance, —  or  rather  under  state  direction.  Even 
in  philosophy  there  was  no  private  instruction ; 
it  must  either  go  unlearned,  or  be  learned  in 
a  state  institution.  The  state  alone  presided 
over  the  examinations  that  opened  the  door  to 
every  career,  and  those  only  could  come  up 
for  examination  who  had  studied  philosophy 
at  state  colleges.  There  was  no  room,  no  ref- 
uge for  freedom,  —  I  was  about  to  say  for  phi- 
losophy, since  freedom  and  philosophy  are  not 
to  be  put  asunder.  Moreover,  freedom  was  won 
for  the  state  before  being  won  for  the  schools. 
The  Revolution  of  1830  abolished  the  state  re- 
ligion everywhere  else,  and  left  it  in  force  in 
the  University,  with  only  this  difference,  —  no 
slight  one,  it  is  true,  —  that  the  University  was 
governed  by  M.  Cousin  instead  of  being  gov- 
erned by  bishops. 

M.  Cousin  fully  admitted  the  despotism 
so  transformed.  This  intellectual  kingship 
pleased  him,  because  it  had  devolved  upon 
a  philosopher.  It  was  in  his  eyes  the  reign 


His  Battles.  149 

of  philosophy,  —  an  utter  mistake,  for  it  was 
but  the  reign  of  M.  Cousin !  Philosophy  was 
still  forbidden,  since  freedom  was  still  under  the 
ban.  "  I  recognize  freedom  "of  thought,"  said 
M.  Cousin, "  and  I  demand  it ;  but  I  do  not  rec- 
ognize freedom  of  instruction."  "  The  state  is 
the  teacher,"  said  he,  in  the  tone  in  which  M. 
Bonald  said  at  the  same  epoch,  "  The  Church 
is  the  teacher."  Cousin's  great  mind  con- 
founded the  right  to  teach  Latin  —  a  right  open 
to  discussion  —  with  the  right  to  teach  a  doc- 
trine. "Freedom  of  thought  is  not  at  stake," 
said  he.  What,  O  philosopher,  signifies  free- 
dom of  thought  without  freedom  of  speech? 

For  his  own  part,  under  the  Restoration  he 
did  not  hesitate  to  make  free  with  the  state 
religion.  But  M.  Cousin  was  not  a  college 
professor,  but  a  professor  at  the  University,  a 
professor  at  Paris,  a  great  professor  and  a  great 
man;  moreover,  he  did  not  think  himself  as 
bold  as  he  was. 

He  rightly  thought  that  there  was  no  parity 
between  the  instruction  of  the  faculties,  ad- 
dressed to  philosophers,  and  that  of  the  col- 
leges, addressed  to  children.  The  distinction 
was  all  the  more  legitimate  because  in  his 
time,  and  with  his  full  assent  when  he  was  in 
power,  the  philosophical  courses  in  the  col- 
leges .were  obligatory.  The  University  was 


150  Victor  Cousin. 

the  only  teacher  of  philosophy,  and  forced  all 
the  would-be  bachelors  to  study  philosophy  in 
its  schools.  Could  it,  in  such  conditions,  per- 
mit its  professors  to  teach  whatever  pleased 
their  fancy?  And  would  the  heads  of  families 
—  who,  though  they  had  not  free  choice  of  in- 
struction, were  at  least  free  to  refuse  the  taxes 
and  to  vote  down  the  Budget  —  give  their 
money  for  a  nondescript  instruction,  or  for 
instruction  opposed  to  their  wishes  and  be- 
liefs? Would  they  yield  their  confidence  to 
a  government  that  should  wound  them  in 
the  most  sensitive  spot,  by  perverting  and 
unsettling  the  minds  and  consciences  of  their 
children? 

To-day  we  have  free  choice  of  instruction, 
and  consequently  the  problem  no  longer  cries 
out  so  loudly  and  peremptorily  for  solution  as 
in  M.  Cousin's  time.  But  if  the  state  does  not 
forbid  private  schools,  it  yet  renders  their  ex- 
istence difficult,  almost  impossible.  Though 
the  state  is  not  the  only  teacher,  it  is  almost 
the  only  one.  It  teaches  with  the  nation's 
money,  and  by  the  nation's  authority.  When- 
ever the  state  sets  forth  a  doctrine,  it  must 
manage  not  to  offend  any  church,  and  espe- 
cially not  to  offend  the  Catholic  Church,  since 
Catholicism  is  the  religion  of  the  immense  ma- 
jority of  the  fathers,  and  of  all  the  mothers. 


His  Battles.  151 

But  what  is  philosophy  when  thus  adjusted 
to  the  requirements  of  any  religion  whatever? 
It  is  no  longer  philosophy.  Ask  Cousin  him- 
self whether  philosophy  can, bear  the  yoke  of 
faith !  On  this  point  he  was  always  unyielding. 
Philosophy  must  be  free,  or  it  ceases  to  exist. 
It  is  a  mockery  to  talk  to  us  in  the  nineteenth 
century  of  a  "  handmaid  of  theology."  Inquisi- 
torial cant !  This  is  the  land  of  Descartes,  and 
we  hold  as  true  all  that  is  proved  true  by  the 
light  of  reason. 

How  can  this  independence  and  this  depend- 
ence be  harmonized?  On  the  one  hand  is  the 
right  to  think  and  say  anything;  on  the  oth- 
er, the  prohibition  to  attack  or  oppose  certain 
doctrines.  Cousin  hit  upon  a  compromise  in 
which  I  think  he  had  too  much  confidence. 
Philosophy  can  yield  none  of  its  freedom,  and 
the  Church  none  of  her  dogmas.  If  I  were 
master,  I  should  escape  the  dilemma  by  trans- 
ferring philosophy  properly  so  called  to  the 
University  faculties,  and  by  limiting  the  philos- 
ophy of  the  colleges  to  the  thorough  study  of 
methods  and  the  reading  of  some  noble  work, 
such  as  the  "  Phaedo  "  for  antiquity,  and  Des- 
cartes' "  Discourse  on  Method "  for  modern 
times.  Cousin  prefers  to  insist  that  philosophy 
and  religion  have  not  absolutely  the  same  aim, 
and  are  not  addressed  to  the  same  minds. 


152  Victor  Cousin. 

The  aim  differs  less  than  he  imagines;  and 
the  Church,  though  it  speaks  only  to  little 
minds,  does  not  consent  to  abandon  great 
minds  to  the  philosophers.  Cousin  insists 
also  upon  the  orthodoxy  of  his  doctrine;  but 
the  Church  replies  that  the  orthodoxy  of  the 
master  does  not  guarantee  the  orthodoxy  of 
his  disciples,  nor  the  orthodoxy  of  to-day 
the  orthodoxy  of  to-morrow.  Moreover,  the 
Church  questions  his  alleged  orthodoxy,  not 
without  reason ;  in  fact,  when  she  tells  all  she 
thinks,  the  Church  shows  that  it  is  not  so  much 
this  or  the  other  doctrine  that  she  questions,  as 
the  right  freely  to  choose  a  doctrine,  —  that  is, 
the  right  to  be  a  philosopher.  It  is  curious  to 
hear  Cousin  say  to  the  philosophers,  "  You 
are  not  free,  —  yet  rejoice,  for  you  have  no 
master  but  me,  and  I  am  a  philosopher ;  "  and 
then  to  see  him  turn  to  the  Church  and  say, 
"  I  claim  for  myself  and  for  all  philosophers 
absolute  independence,  —  yet  be  not  anxious 
either  as  to  the  present  or  the  future,  for  my 
philosophy  is  orthodox." 

He  assures  us  that  only  false  philosophy  and 
false  religion  are  at  loggerheads.  This  is  the 
language  of  a  man  who  has  become  chief  of 
police  in  the  philosopher's  world.  The  inqui- 
sitor, who  has  become  chief  of  police  in  the 
theological  world,  and  the  true  philosopher, 


His  Battles.  153 

who  will  neither  submit  to  police  control  nor 
exercise  it,  would  say  quite  the  contrary. 

After  1830  Cousin  strove  to  be  orthodox, 
and  strove  with  less  success  to  prove  that  he 
had  always  been  orthodox.  He  kept  a  watch 
over  the  professors  in  his  department,  to  com- 
pel them  to  be  orthodox.  The  professors  com- 
plained, of  course;  the  Church  complained 
too.  This  alleged  orthodoxy  was  not  admitted ; 
but  suppose  the  Church  had  admitted  it !  The 
fact  that  he  was  a  philosopher  was  enough  to 
make  him  an  object  of  suspicion. 

Before  1830,  Romanism  being  the  state  re- 
ligion, the  Church  could  attack  philosophy  in 
its  principle.  After  1830,  obliged  to  make  a 
feint  of  yielding  this  point,  the  Church  shifted 
her  ground  of  attack  to  pantheism.  Panthe- 
ism was  found  in  Cousin's  lectures  and  in 
his  Preface  of  1826.  His  disavowal  was  not 
listened  to.  What  the  master  had  said,  the 
Church  attributed  to  all  the  philosophers. 
The  clergy  thereupon  renewed  all  their  former 
declamations  against  pantheism,  and  repeated 
everywhere,  "  These  are  the  plague-ridden 
schools  to  which  you  are  compelled  to  send 
your  children." 

I  think  Cousin  acted  in  good  faith  in  dis- 
avowing pantheism.  I  think,  too,  that  he 
inwardly  accused  himself  of  imprudence  for 


154  Victor  Cousin. 

writing  the  words,  "  If  God  is  not  all,  he  is 
nothing;  "  but  what  author  who  has  written 
much,  has  not  been  imprudent  ?  When  we 
speak  of  the  relations  of  God  and  the  world, 
we  graze  the  rocks  on  every  hand.  It  would 
have  been  embarrassing  to  defend  his  phrases 
in  themselves;  he  did  better  and  more  skil- 
fully: he  found  analogous  expressions  in  Saint 
Augustine.  "  I  am  a  pantheist,"  said  he,  "  pre- 
cisely in  the  sense  in  which  Saint  Augustine  is 
a  pantheist."  Does  it  not  seem  that  one  ought 
to  be  safe  behind  a  father  of  the  Church,  and 
such  a  father? 

We  must,  in  fact,  distinguish  with  care  be- 
tween the  two  Cousins, —  Cousin  as  instructor 
before  1830,  and  Cousin  as  superintendent  of 
instruction  after  1830:  Cousin  militant  and 
Cousin  regnant.  On  reading  over  his  lectures 
from  1815  to  1830,  I  think  I  sometimes  see  a 
straining  after  effect,  —  the  vice  of  the  orator ; 
sometimes  the  absence  of  a  solution  is  hidden 
beneath  the  wilful  obscurity  of  a  formula, — 
the  vice  of  the  rhetorician  ;  but  I  never  see  the 
fear  of  the  master  or  of  the  dominant  creed. 
It  is  the  play  of  a  free  spirit,  if  not  always  of  a 
very  profound  intelligence.  I  do  not  find  the 
same  characteristics  in  the  writings  that  he  com- 
posed after  becoming  administrator  of  philoso- 
phy. He  now  seems,  on  the  contrary,  anxious 


His  Battles.  155 

only  to  be  prudent  He  constantly  asserts  his 
freedom,  but  we  feel  that  he  will  not  abuse 
it  Should  he  speak  on  the  relations  of  the 
finite  with  the  infinite,  we  are  very  sure  that 
he  would  not  repeat  his  former  statements. 
Even  in  re-editing  his  former  books  he  takes 
out  all  the  sting.  His  freedom,  proclaimed 
as  a  principle,  is  incomplete  in  practice.  He 
is  orthodox  hi  his  second  manner.  With 
this  change  I  should  not  reproach  him,  had 
it  merely  fallen  out  so;  but  it  is  the  result 
of  deliberate  intention,  and  therefore  blame- 
worthy. Under  such  conditions  a  man  is  not 
a  philosopher;  he  is  but  a  preacher, —  a  trusty 
and  discreet  preacher.  In  saying  this  I  do  not 
mean  to  attack  Cousin ;  I  merely  classify  him. 
He  thought  that  mankind  owed  to  philosophy 
its  progress,  but  to  religion  its  peace,  its  hap- 
piness. Philosophy  guides  and  consoles  only 
the  chosen  few;  it  is  the  product  only  of  a  well- 
organized  and  self-controlled  community;  it 
disappears  or  becomes  confused  in  a  declining 
civilization.  Even  during  philosophic  eras,  if 
there  had  been  no  priest  by  the  side  of  the 
scholar,  almost  the  whole  of  the  human  race 
would  have  been  without  a  guide.  If  religion 
is  so  essential,  —  essential  for  well-being,  that 
is,  for  morality,  for  consolation,  for  hope, — 
has  philosophy  the  right  to  suppress  it?  Can 


156  Victor  Cousin. 

philosophy  suppress  what  it  cannot  replace? 
The  philosopher  says  of  religion,  "  It  is  false, 
and  I  shall  suppress  it."  The  preacher  or 
the  politician  replies,  "  It  is  useful,  and  I  shall 
respect  it." 

Cousin,  speaking  as  a  politician,  says  ex- 
pressly that  to  oppose  religion,  to  enter  the 
lists  against  it,  is  a  criminal  act.  In  this  he 
resembles  Socrates,  who,  after  giving  his  opin- 
ion of  the  gods,  still  wishes  to  offer  a  libation 
before  drinking  the  hemlock.  All  enlightened 
antiquity  had  ceased  to  believe,  and  had  not 
ceased  to  sacrifice.  The  vulgar  went  to  the 
temple  from  credulity,  and  the  chosen  few  from 
patriotism. 

All  the  liberals  of  the  Restoration,  with  Cousin 
at  their  head,  accepted  religion  in  the  interests 
of  public  morals.  They  respected  it  on  this 
ground,  but  meant  to  oblige  it  to  fulfil  its  func- 
tion in  their  way,  not  in  its  own.  This  policy 
toward  religion  is  that  of  the  Savoyard  vicar;  it 
is  that  of  the  Constituent  Assembly  when  it  set- 
tled the  civil  status  of  the  clergy ;  it  is  wholly 
of  Rousseau's  school,  to  which  Cousin  belongs. 
We  are  to-day  amazed  to  hear  religion  and  phi- 
losophy called  "  the  two  immortal  sisters,"  be- 
cause we  are  no  longer  swept  on  by  that  current 
of  ideas.  The  liberals  of  those  days  demanded 
the  sacraments  without  believing  in  them,  and 


His  Battles.  157 

treated  the  priests  as  fanatics  for  refusing  the 
sacraments  of  the  Church  to  those  who  did 
not  accept  the  Church.  In  the  discussions  con- 
cerning education,  —  especially  those  concern- 
ing the  ecclesiastical  secondary  schools,  —  the 
liberals  imposed  upon  the  Church  obligations 
and  restrictions  which  they  thought  liberal  be- 
cause profitable  to  their  party,  and  which  the 
Church  regarded  as  violations  of  her  freedom 
because  contrary  to  her  beliefs  and  principles. 

This  point  of  view  must  be  taken  in  order 
to  understand  certain  of  Cousin's  doctrines  and 
the  chief  acts  of  his  administration.  He  would 
have  no  chaplain  at  the  Normal  School,  because 
a  chaplain  would  hamper  the  teaching  of  phi- 
losophy ;  and  at  this  great  school  philosophy 
must  be  freely  expounded.  But  he  demanded 
the  presence  of  the  parish  priest  in  the  can- 
tonal school  board ;  he  declared  loudly  that  no 
prosperity  was  possible  for  primary  instruction 
without  the  friendly  patronage  of  the  clergy; 
and  he  placed  the  recitation  of  the  catechism 
among  the  most  important  of  school  exercises. 

It  has  often  been  repeated  that  Cousin  him- 
self made  a  catechism  for  the  use  of  schools. 
A  catechism !  This  is  a  little  more  than  the 
truth,  though  not  much  more.  Here  is  the 
complete  title  of  this  little  book,  now  rather 
hard  to  procure :  "  Book  of  Moral  and  Religious 


158  Victor  Cousin. 

Instruction,  for  the  Use  of  Catholic  Primary, 
Elementary,  and  Higher  Schools,  Normal 
Schools,  and  Examining  Boards,  Authorized 
[on  the  second  edition]  by  the  Royal  Council 
of  Public  Instruction."  Levrault:  Paris  and 
Strasburg.  1834.  260  pp.  18  mo.  The  book 
is  preceded  by  an  "  Advertisement  "  resem- 
bling a  ministerial  circular:  "This  is  the  book 
required  by  the  law  of  June  28,  1833,  which  so 
properly  places  moral  and  religious  instruction 
in  the  first  rank  among  the  materials  of  popu- 
lar education."  Then  come  counsels,  or  rather 
orders,  to  the  teachers  in  the  several  grades: 
"The  professor  [in  normal  schools]  should 
give  regular  instruction  which  all  the  pupils  can 
write  out,  so  that  at  the  end  of  the  course  what 
they  have  written  at  different  times  may  form 
a  complete  doctrinal  course.  .  .  .  The  present 
book  of  moral  and  religious  instruction  should 
form  the  basis  of  this  instruction."  The  "  Ad- 
vertisement "  is  no  less  imperative  in  its  orders 
to  examining  boards :  "  Examining  boards  are 
requested  to  guard  against  two  opposite  errors 
into  which  they  might  fall :  the  error  of  asking 
candidates  questions  historical  only,  and  that 
of  asking  questions  doctrinal  only.  ...  In  the 
general  examination,  which  should  crown  and 
terminate  the  courses  of  the  elementary  school, 
and  serve  as  a  basis  for  each  child's  certifi- 


His  Battles.  159 

cate  of  dismissal,  moral  and  religious  instruc- 
tion must  have  its  place  by  the  side  of  other 
branches  of  instruction,  with  the  mention  of 
the  mark  indicating  the  child's  proficiency." 
Cousin's  manner,  and  the  ideas  of  his  reports 
on  primary  instruction  in  Holland  and  Ger- 
many, are  to  be  found  in  every  line  of  this 
"  Advertisement."  The  book  is  divided  into 
two  parts :  the  first  recounts  everything  in  the 
history  of  the  human  race,  "  and  the  plan  of 
divine  Providence"  that  prepared  and  made 
way  for  the  coming  of  Jesus  Christ  and  his 
doctrine;  the  second  part  is  this  doctrine  it- 
self. After  having  added  that  the  historical 
part  is  taken  from  the  Holy  Scriptures  and  the 
doctrinal  part  from  the  most  celebrated  cate- 
chisms, the  author  is  pleased  to  subjoin  that 
"this  compend,  intended  solely  for  schools, 
does  not  do  away  with  the  diocesan  catechism, 
whose  office  it  remains  to  prepare  for  the  reli- 
gious exercises  appertaining  to  the  Church." 

I  doubt  whether  this  concession  to  the  bishops 
was  calculated  to  reassure  them  touching  their 
superior  right  to  teach  religion  themselves, 
and  whether  this  declaration  of  conformity  to 
the  most  celebrated  catechisms  satisfied  them 
touching  the  book's  orthodoxy.  It  might  have 
been  asked  why  a  uniform  text-book  was  ne- 
cessary for  the  schools,  and  whether  the  Royal 


160  Victor  Cousin. 

Council  had  supposed  that  there  might  be 
diversity  of  doctrine  between  the  catechisms 
of  the  different  dioceses.  Besides,  since  the 
diocesan  catechism  was  preserved,  what  pur- 
pose was  served  by  putting  beside  it  a  univer- 
sity catechism?  Was  there  in  this  enterprise 
a  reminiscence  of  the  Empire,  which  had  also 
required  a  uniform  catechism?  In  having  its 
catechism  approved  by  ecclesiastical  author- 
ity, the  Empire  had  acted  more  regularly;  in 
making  it  everywhere  obligatory,  the  Empire 
had  acted  more  despotically.  The  present  cate- 
chism was  obligatory  only  in  the  schools, — 
but  in  all  the  schools,  —  and  perhaps  it  was 
fancied  that  in  time  a  catechism  so  well  rec- 
ommended and  so  widely  distributed  would 
take  the  place  of  every  other. 

The  clergy  were  not  overmuch  disturbed  by 
this  extremely  bold  attempt  to  put  religious 
instruction  into  the  hands  of  the  Royal  Council 
and  its  lay  inspectors  and  teachers.  The  clergy 
had  their  representative  in  every  grade  of  uni- 
versity administration,  and  the  outside  bishop 
was  noiselessly  ousted  in  the  interests  of  the 
real  bishops.  This  outside  bishop,  who  was 
Cousin  in  person,  dared  neither  to  protest  nor 
to  show  himself.  Do  I  err  in  fathering  this 
book  upon  him  ?  I  admit  that  he  did  not  sign 
it,  but  he  made  it.  In  the  first  place,  as  a  mem- 


His  Battles.  161 

her  of  the  Council  he  certainly  approved  the 
book ;  its  approval  was  certainly  proposed  by 
him;  he  certainly  wrote  the  "Advertisement;" 
there  certainly  are,  throughout  the  book,  nu- 
merous pages  of  which  he  is  the  author.  Was 
the  remainder  composed  of  divers  extracts, 
excerpted  by  him  "  from  the  Holy  Scriptures 
and  from  the  most  celebrated  catechisms  "  ?  I 
think  so.  The  catechism  is  not  uninteresting. 
It  is  relatively  clear.  It  explains  everything. 
"  Q.  What  is  meant  by  the  expression  that  the 
Son  is  consubstantial  with  the  Father? — A.  It 
means  that  the  Son  shares  the  Father's  sub- 
stance.—  Q.  How  can  this  be  conceived? — 
A.  The  Father  cannot  subsist  for  one  moment 
without  knowing  himself,  and  by  knowing  him- 
self he  produces  his  Son.  [If  the  author  gave 
notes,  he  would  not  fail  to  write  at  the  foot  of 
the  page:  God's  thought  is  the  thought  of 
thought.]  —  <2-  How  has  the  Holy  Ghost  the 
same  nature  as  the  Father  and  the  Son?  — 
A.  The  Father  and  the  Son  cannot  subsist  for 
one  moment  without  loving  one  another,  and 
by  loving  one  another  they  produce  the  Holy 
Ghost."  And  a  little  farther  on :  "  Q.  How  do 
these  two  natures  [the  divine  nature  and  the 
human  nature]  make  but  one  person  in  Jesus 
Christ?  —  A.  In  about  the  same  way  that  soul 
and  body  in  ourselves  make  but  one  man." 


1 62  Victor  Cousin. 

By  the  Restoration  the  professors  in  the  col- 
leges were  driven  to  display  a  rather  ignoble 
sort  of  sham  credulity;  the  pupils  were  also 
driven  to  it,  since  they  were  obliged  every 
month  to  present  a  certificate  of  confession. 
Some  traces  of  this  sorry  past  were  left  in 
university  manners  and  habits  after  1830,  al- 
though the  change  of  front  in  the  University 
had  been  complete  and  noisy,  —  too  noisy,  in- 
deed, for  the  honor  of  the  University  after  its 
long  submission.  All  this  is  rather  lost  sight  of 
now  that  the  century  is  closing,  yet  it  is  history. 
There  was  no  religious  instruction  at  the  Nor- 
mal School  after  1830;  but  low  mass  on  Sun- 
day was  obligatory.  (This  became  optional 
after  a  time ;  to  offset  this,  however,  the  lapse 
of  time  brought  a  chaplain.)  Mass,  then,  was 
obligatory  while  I  was  a  pupil  at  the  Normal 
School  (1833-1836),  with  M.  Cousin  as  Coun- 
cillor-Director, and  M.  Guigniaut  as  Director 
under  his  orders.  We  were  obliged  to  bring  a 
prayer-book,  and  there  was  a  conspiracy  on  the 
part  of  some  pupils  to  go  without  one.  They 
were  punished  by  confinement.  Next  Sunday 
they  brought  books,  and  purposely  took  their 
seats  in  front  of  M.  Guigniaut,  who  was  imme- 
diately struck  by  their  devotion.  He  took  his 
neighbor's  book.  It  was  a  variorum  Lucre- 
tius, the  Leyden  edition  of  1725.  He  looked 


His  Battles.  163 

at  it  with  entire  gravity  and  returned  it  to  the 
pupil  (Am£dee  Jacques),  saying  in  a  low  voice : 
"  Read  rather  Bentley  and  Wakefield's  edition, 
London,  1796."  Our  missal  was  Lucretius; 
but  we  held  a  book,  and  the  honor  of  the 
University  was  satisfied. 

Cousin  did  not  ask  his  professors  to  go  to 
mass.  I  even  believe  that  he  would  have 
thought  it  rather  unbecoming  to  go,  unless 
indeed  one  was  a  good  Catholic.  He  merely 
wished  us  to  be  respectful  to  religion  and 
to  the  clergy.  He  absolutely  required  that 
there  should  not  be  one  word  in  the  instruc- 
tion of  college  professors  which  might  seem 
to  be  directed  either  against  the  respect 
due  to  religions  or  against  their  doctrines. 
We  all  taught  the  absolute  independence  of 
thought,  and  consequently  of  philosophy;  on 
this  point  he  was  as  firm  as  any  of  us.  We 
all  avoided  with  the  greatest  care  speaking  of 
questions  purely  theological,  such  as  the  Trin- 
ity, the  fall,  redemption.  But  religions,  besides 
their  theological  dogmas,  have  philosophical 
dogmas.  They  have  their  beliefs  as  to  the 
spirituality  and  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  as 
to  human  freedom,  as  to  morals,  as  to  creation. 
A  college  professor,  or  even  a  university  pro- 
fessor, who  should  have  expressed  doubts  con- 
cerning the  spirituality  of  the  soul  or  our  free 


164  Victor  Cousin. 

will,  would  infallibly  have  been  either  removed 
or  dismissed  as  soon  as  Cousin  had  been  in- 
formed of  it.  This  was  not  on  his  part  an 
assault  upon  our  personal  liberty,  since  we 
remained  free  to  think  or  speak  as  we  pleased, 
provided  we  resigned  our  chairs.  It  might 
even  be  maintained  that  he  could  not  allow  us 
complete  freedom  of  speech  without  offending 
against  the  liberty  of  our  pupils  and  their  fami- 
lies. As  the  college  course  in  philosophy  was 
required  of  all  who  wished  to  come  up  for  the 
baccalaureate,  —  since  the  certificate  of  studies 
was  not  abolished  until  after  the  Revolution  of 
1848,  —  it  was  impossible  to  oblige  a  Christian 
family  to  listen  to  Antichristian  teaching.  The 
instructions  were:  In  whatever  belongs  to  the 
domain  of  religion,  neutrality;  in  whatever  be- 
longs to  the  domain  of  philosophy,  spiritualism, 
deism. 

Cousin  related  to  me  that  in  the  course  of 
his  ministry  King  Louis  Philippe  repeated  to 
him  on  several  occasions :  "  Do  not  get  me 
into  trouble  with  my  good  queen."  The  queen, 
though  never  having  anything  to  do  with  poli- 
tics, had  much  to  do  with  religion ;  and  when 
she  was  told  that  anything  was  going  wrong  in 
that  direction,  she  begged  the  king  to  be  pru- 
dent The  king  asked  nothing  better  than  to 
be  prudent,  nor  Cousin  either  (since  his  eleva- 


His  Battles.  165 

tion);  and  the  latter  used  to  ask  us,  as  he  knew 
how  to  ask,  "  not  to  get  him  into  trouble." 
More  than  one  among  us  left  philosophy  for 
history  or  political  economy,  impelled  by 
nothing  save  these  warnings,  which,  though 
paternal,  were  express  and  clear. 

I  have  said  that  our  provincial  compeers 
came  every  year,  at  the  holidays,  and  even 
sometimes  at  the  Easter  vacation,  to  pass  in 
review  before  the  sovereign  master  of  their 
destinies.  Cousin  had  his  favorites,  who  were 
none  other  than  the  most  laborious  and  the 
most  deserving,  for  I  cannot  too  often  repeat 
that  he  was  at  bottom  very  just ;  and  upon  re- 
flection, we  always  found  a  motive  for  what 
had  seemed  to  us  mere  caprices. 

This  complex  man,  of  whom  I  could  relate 
traits  of  avarice  and  traits  of  munificence,  had 
a  fancy  somewhat  rare  among  all-powerful 
functionaries,  —  he  was  fond  of  having  his 
young  professors  about  him,  and  liked  to  give 
them  a  dinner.  You  know  that  he  was  a  bach- 
elor. He  lived  at  the  Sorbonne,  in  his  library ; 
for  this  is  the  name  to  apply  to  his  suite  of 
rooms.  He  did  not  keep  open  table.  In  the 
morning  he  ate  bread  and  honey,  or  a  plateful 
of  cabbage  soup,  or  some  such  favorite  dish,  — 
truly  a  hermit's  repast.  In  the  evening  he 
dined- with  his  great  friends,  for  this  philoso- 


1 66  Victor  Cousin. 

pher  was  worldly ;  he  was  fond  of  high  society 
without  belonging  to  it,  and  enjoyed  the  praises 
it  heaped  upon  him.  On  the  somewhat  rare 
days  when  he  was  not  invited,  he  took  one  of 
us  with  him  to  dine  at  a  restaurant.  For  some 
years  I  was  almost  always  the  one;  indeed, 
we  ended  by  dining  at  Risbecq's,  on  the  Odeon 
Square,  and  sharing  the  expense.  I  was  never, 
I  think,  so  near  his  heart  as  Barthelemy  Saint- 
Hilaire,  Franck,  Bouillier,  and  perhaps  —  some- 
what later  —  Caro  and  Janet ;  but  I  was  very 
intimate  with  him.  In  the  holidays  he  dined 
the  flower  of  our  provincial  professors.  I  beg 
you  to  believe  that  the  fare  was  not  luxurious ; 
but  we  had  a  good  dinner,  and  the  host  on 
such  occasions  was  in  a  charming  humor. 

One  day  it  happened  that  he  could  not  re- 
ceive five  or  six  of  our  colleagues  when  they 
rang  his  door-bell.  He  was  very  much  an- 
noyed by  it.  "  I  know  where  to  find  them," 
said  I,  "  I  will  have  them  come  to-morrow." 
"  Better  still,  invite  them  to  dinner  this  even- 
ing." —  "  Capital !  "  "  These  and  the  others  you 
meet,"  he  called  after  me  as  I  closed  the  door. 
"  Let  it  be  at  Pinson's  at  seven  o'clock."  I  in- 
vited a  round  dozen  of  them.  I  called  for  him 
about  half-past  six  rather  chop-fallen,  for  I  had 
just  remembered  that  it  was  Good  Friday.  This 
was  the  first  thing  I  said  when  I  entered  his 


His  Battles.  167 

study.  "  Ah,  what  a  pity !  "  said  he.  "  Why 
did  we  not  think  of  that  this  morning?  And 
they  will  be  at  Pinson's  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour? 
It  is  impossible  to  see  them  beforehand." 
"  Impossible."  —  "  We  might  bring  them  here  ; 
Madame  Blanchard  would  give  us  our  dinner." 
I  knew  by  hard  experience  his  housekeeper's 
talents,  but  anything  was  better  than  to  cause 
a  scandal.  We  began  to  measure  the  table ;  it 
would  positively  hold  but  six  guests,  and  there 
were  fourteen  of  us.  "  Come  what  may,"  said 
he,  "  we  will  dine  without  flesh ;  and  if  we  get 
a  thump  or  two,  we  can  shrug  our  shoulders." 
The  dinner  was  very  entertaining.  Vacherot 
attempted  to  talk  metaphysics  and  Franck 
psychology,  each  according  to  his  dominant 
passion;  but  Cousin,  all  the  while,  talked  of 
nothing  but  the  duty  of  not  dining  at  a  restau- 
rant on  Good  Friday. 

He  had  no  other  days  to  give  us,  no  other 
house  in  which  to  receive  us.  We  held,  as 
we  dined,  our  little  semiannual  conference, — 
"  Not  a  very  gay  dinner-party,"  he  used  to  say. 
Philosophy  was  threatened.  If  it  came  to 
blows,  he  would  bear  the  whole  brunt  of  them, 
and  would  not  suffer  any  one  to  claim  the  least 
share  in  the  combat;  but  to  make  defence 
possible  we  must  first  make  our  teaching  irre- 
proachable. "  Don't  allow  yourselves  to  touch 


1 68  Victor  Cousin, 

upon  religion,  even  in  private  conversation. 
The  Trinity,  original  sin,  redemption?  These 
are  matters  with  which  I  have  nothing  to  do. 
Inquire  of  my  reverend  colleague,  the  college 
chaplain.  I  may  have  a  religion,  —  that  is  my 
affair.  As  professor,  I  demonstrate  the  truths 
common  to  all  religions.  I  am  the  common 
helper  of  them  all ;  I  must  not,  can  not,  will 
not  be  a  hindrance  to  any  one  of  them.  But," 
he  added  with  a  solemn  air,  "  there  is  panthe- 
ism !  [Pantheism  was  then  the  great  war-cry 
raised  against  him,  and  consequently  against 
the  University.]  Pantheism,  gentlemen  [I  omit 
a  refutation  of  pantheism,  spiced  with  invec- 
tives that  might  have  been  uttered  by  the  Rev. 
Abb6  Combalot,  who  was  preaching  a  Lent- 
sermon  within  a  few  steps  of  us.], — .  .  .  if  you 
are  accused  of  pantheism,  call  at  once  upon 
the  bishop."  This  was  his  great  specific.  He 
thought,  or  pretended  to  think,  that  his  pro- 
fessors of  philosophy  always  had  free  access 
to  the  bishop's  palace. 

During  our  third  year  at  the  Normal  School 
he  had  described  to  us  beforehand  just  how 
we  should  proceed  at  the  palace,  the  speeches 
we  were  to  make,  the  replies  that  would  be 
made  to  us.  By  the  way,  I  do  not  think  that 
he  was  himself  a  very  constant  visitor  at  the 
palace  of  the  Archbishop  of  Paris.  He  ex- 


His  Battles.  169 

celled  in  composing  little  comic  scenes  in  this 
way,  and  acted  them  —  the  expression  is  none 
too  strong  —  with  the  talent  of  a  great  come- 
dian. In  these  improvised  farces  the  philoso- 
pher was  always  a  sort  of  miniature  statesman, 
and  the  bishop  a  very  profound  theologian. 
"  '  Monsignor,  I  am  accused  of  pantheism.  It 
is  true ;  I  am  a  pantheist,  —  like  Saint  Augus- 
tine.' Here  you  will  quote  all  those  expres- 
sions of  Saint  Augustine  which  would  be  more 
reprehensible  than  my  own,  if  all  were  not 
subordinated  —  in  his  case  as  in  mine  —  to 
our  respective  doctrines  touching  freedom  and 
grace.  Be  on  your  guard,"  he  added,  "be- 
cause the  bishop  is  very  able.  Talleyrand 
often  told  me  that  nothing  sharpens  the  wits 
like  theological  studies.  He  was  right;  all 
diplomatists  should  begin  their  training  at  the 
school  of  Saint-Sulpice.  Be  drawn  into  no 
discussion  with  him  !  Always  lead  him  to  the 
question  of  free-will  On  this  ground  you  are 
invincible.  What  is  substance  without  causal- 
ity? '  Do  you  admit,  Monsignor,  that  I  be- 
lieve in  the  independence  of  our  judgments 
and  the  freedom  of  our  acts?'  You  carry  this 
belief  perhaps  further  than  he  would  have  you 
carry  it.  Should  he  assume  a  threatening 
mien,  you  will  immediately  rise :  '  Monsignor, 
I  am  "dependent  upon  my  chieC  I  refer  you  to 


170  Victor  Cousin. 

M.  Cousin.'  Then  I  intervene  ! "  (These  last 
words  in  the  tone  of  Rodrigue  in  "  The  Cid  " : 
"  Nous  nous  levons  alors  /" :)  At  this  point  he 
began  to  describe  with  extraordinary  raciness 
the  session  of  the  Chamber  of  Peers  in  which 
he  would  undertake  the  defence  of  philosophy. 
People  had  come  running  in  from  all  the  ad- 
joining rooms  to  hear  these  fine  things  and  to 
see  M.  Cousin  dine  that  day  at  his  inn.  I  used 
often  to  think,  in  1844,  when  he  made  head  so 
gallantly  against  excited  public  opinion,  that 
he  had  been  gifted  with  second-sight  in  1838. 

It  was  at  precisely  the  moment  when  he  was 
growing  very  prudent,  that  the  complaints 
against  philosophy,  which  were  complaints 
against  him,  assumed  alarming  proportions. 
On  the  morrow  of  the  Revolution  of  July,  M. 
de  Montalembert  and  the  Rev.  Abbe"  Lacor- 
daire  had  demanded  liberty  of  instruction.2 
They  had  demanded  it  with  entire  sincerity, 
because  they  wanted  it  and  had  a  passion  for 
it.  M.  Veuillot  did  not  want  it,  but  with  pro- 

1  "  Then  we  rise,"  words  of  Don  Rodrigue  when  describ- 
ing the  success  of  the  ambuscade  he  had  formed  against  the 
Moors.     ("  The  Cid,"  Act.  IV.  Scene  3.)  —  TR. 

2  "  Liberty,  that  is,  for  persons  outside  the  official  hierarchy 
of  public  instruction  to  open  schools."    See  Matthew  Arnold's 
charming  description  of  "  A  French  Eton."     "  Free  instruc- 
tion "   means,    therefore,   private  rather  than  gratuitous  in- 
struction. —  TR. 


His  Battles.  171 

found  policy  divined  that  by  demanding  it 
he  would  mightily  embarrass  adversaries  who 
could  not  refuse  it  without  violating  all  their 
principles.  Making  no  secret  of  his  intentions, 
he  said  straightforwardly :  "  Liberty  being  one 
of  your  principles,  you  cannot  refuse  it  to  me. 
Were  I  in  power  I  should  refuse  you  liberty, 
because  it  is  no  principle  of  mine."  They  did 
not  fail  to  reply :  "  You  ask  it,  then,  only  to 
destroy  it."  But  in  spite  of  M.  Veuillot's  ulti- 
mate intentions,  liberty  was  no  less  liberty,  and 
right  no  less  right.  Every  sentence  written  by 
those  who  answered  him  in  the  newspapers 
was  disastrous  to  themselves. 

"  I  take  this  weapon,"  said  he,  "  and  I  take  it 
from  your  own  hands,  because  I  have  no  other 
with  which  to  overthrow  you.  And  I  must 
overthrow  you,  eclectics,  you,  pantheists,  be- 
cause you  are  the  enemies  of  my  faith."  If 
Cousin  answered  that  he  was  not  a  pantheist, 
"  Ah !  suppose  you  were  not ! "  said  Louis 
Veuillot ;  "  you  are  certainly  not  a  materialist ; 
you  were  never  a  materialist.  Nevertheless, 
materialism  is  one  of  my  grievances  against 
you,  because  you  are  philosophy,  and  all  the 
rights  you  claim  for  yourself  materialism  will 
claim  for  itself  in  its  day,  which  is  near  at 
hand." 

This   fierce  adversary,   whom   Cousin   long 


172  Victor  Cousin. 

affected  to  despise,  troubled  him  greatly. 
Veuillot  was  the  chief  of  numerous  allies,  who 
recognized  him  neither  as  their  chief  nor  as 
their  ally.  This  implacable  foe  of  liberty,  de- 
testing it  while  he  made  use  of  it,  and  the  no- 
ble friends  of  liberty,  demanding  it  for  its  own 
sake,  combined  to  demonstrate  to  Catholics 
that  the  official  philosophy  (a  title  that  might 
properly  be  given  to  M.  Cousin's  philosophy) 
was  opposed  to  the  philosophy  avowed,  patron- 
ized, and  watched  over  by  the  Church.  Help 
came  to  them  from  every  quarter.  "  L'Uni- 
vers  "  1  was  eagerly  seconded  by  the  whole 
religious  and  Legitimist  press,  separated  from 
it  in  other  respects  by  a  great  gulf.  In  these 
journals  the  controversy  was  scholarly,  keen, 
terse,  while  Veuillot  howled  and  bellowed, 
without,  after  all,  losing  any  of  his  strength. 
He  bawled  in  order  to  attract  and  arouse  the 
idlers.  He  represented  the  university  men  with 
a  comic  force  that  was  irresistible.  I  know  not 
if  the  rest  laughed ;  but  I  often  laughed  as 
at  a  good  comic  play,  somewhat  burlesque, 
but  very  pointed.  Nevertheless,  I  was  more 
often  indignant,  for  he  was  dishonest;  he  gar- 
bled texts  to  suit  himself,  attributed  to  one 
what  belonged  to  another,  drew  inferences 
never  implied  in  the  principles,  attributed  evil 
1  Veuillot's  ultramontane  newspaper.  —  TR. 


His  Battles.  173 

designs  to  his  adversaries,  and  went  the  length 
of  charging  them  with  imaginary  vices.  He 
was  like  a  mastiff  filling  France  with  his  bark- 
ing against  the  poor  university  men,  who  were 
held  in  leash  by  Cousin  and  condemned  to 
make  no  reply.  When  Veuillot's  newspaper 
did  not  afford  space  enough,  he  issued  pam- 
phlets. Every  one  read  his  "Freethinkers," 
which  are  now  no  longer  read,  because  there 
is  a  fashion  in  pamphlets  as  in  novels,  and 
because  Louis  Veuillot,  great  as  he  was,  was 
no  such  pamphleteer  as  Pascal. 

Among  Veuillot's  imitators — and  they  were 
numerous — must  be  reckoned  Des  Carets, 
author  of  "  The  University  Monopoly."  This 
writer  had  little  of  Veuillot  but  his  grossness ; 
yet  he  found  readers,  for  this  war  against  the 
eclectics  was  popular.  Even  bishops  took 
part  in  it.  I  remember  a  charge  from  the 
Bishop  of  Chartres,  in  which  I  was  accused 
of  writing  two  large  volumes  demanding  the 
restoration  of  divorce.  Now,  I  never  wrote  .two 
large  volumes  on  divorce,  nor  even  one  small 
volume.  I  wrote  merely  one  short  chapter, 
and  this  was  not  to  demand  the  restoration  of 
divorce,  but  to  oppose  it  with  all  my  might ;  for, 
my  whole  life  long,  I  have  been  a  declared  and 
passionate  enemy  of  divorce.  This  is  one  ex- 
ample to  show  how  far  grave  and  evidently  sin- 


174  Victor  Cousin. 

cere  men  allowed  themselves  to  be  carried  by 
polemical  ardor.  At  the  very  time  when  this 
great  cobble-stone  was  launched  at  my  head, 
I  was  in  bad  odor  at  the  University,  because  I 
agreed  with  its  enemies  in  demanding  the  sup- 
pression of  the  university  monopoly.  M.  Cou- 
sin reproached  me  with  attacking  "  the  great 
work  of  Napoleon,  the  main  safeguard  of  so- 
ciety." Truly,  the  trade  of  the  Liberal  is  hard  ! 

While  the  Catholics  reproached  the  univer- 
sity men  with  their  rashness,  Pierre  Leroux 
and  his  confederates  reproached  them  with 
their  weakness.  That  junto  entertained  a  sin- 
gular prejudice.  Pierre  Leroux  set  out  with 
the  principle  that  every  philosopher  is  neces- 
sarily a  pantheist.  When  a  professor  declared 
that  he  was  not  a  pantheist,  Leroux  retorted : 
"  You  lie  !  you  are  a  pantheist,  being  a  philoso- 
pher; and  moreover  Cousin,  whose  valet  you 
are  in  square  cap  and  robe,  is  incontestably 
a  pantheist.  You  are  afraid  of  Veuillot  and 
the  priests.  You  are  a  coward,  a  disgrace  to 
philosophy." 

Arrayed  against  the  philosophers  there  was, 
finally,  a  third  party, — that  of  the  statesmen. 
The  statesmen,  in  so  far  as  they  were  philoso- 
phers,—  which,  indeed,  was  not  far,  —  were  of 
the  philosophers'  opinion.  But  as  statesmen 
they  desired  peace  at  any  price;  this  disturb- 


His  Battles.  175 

ance  raised  by  Veuillot  annoyed  them,  and 
they  laid  the  blame  of  it  less  on  him,  the  ring- 
leader in  it,  than  on  his  victims,  the  innocent 
occasion  of  it.  They  found  no  better  way  to 
silence  the  disturbance  than  by  granting  that 
Veuillot  and  his  allies  were  right.  This  phi- 
losophy, and  especially  these  philosophers,  were 
not  worth  all  the  noise  made  about  them. 
There  was  simply  nothing  for  it  but  to  get 
rid  of  them.  They  said  to  Cousin :  "  You 
are  making  trouble  for  us !  " 

This  campaign  against  the  University  was 
prolonged  several  years.  Cousin  had  his 
hands  full:  first,  to  keep  his  professors  from 
giving  occasion  for  criticism  by  their  teach- 
ing; then,  when,  in  spite  of  all,  criticism  ap- 
peared, to  keep  them  from  replying.  When 
they  complained  of  this  law  of  silence,  he 
said,  "  I  take  it  all  on  my  shoulders."  But  he 
was  himself  thought  to  be  very  silent;  he  was 
almost  accused  of  connivance.  It  was  in  the 
University  that  it  was  first  said,  "  He  is  to  be 
a  cardinal,"  —  a  very  harmless  jest,  of  which 
he  was  not  the  only  victim.  At  last  the  or- 
ganic law  of  1844  gave  him  opportunity  and 
made  it  his  duty  to  speak. 

He  collected  his  speeches,  made  in  April 
and  May,  1844,  in  the  Chamber  of  Peers,  in  a 
curious  volume  entitled  "  Defence  of  the  Uni- 


1 76  Victor  Cousin. 

versity  and  of  Philosophy."  This  is  a  very 
important  historical  document,  showing  what 
was  the  state  of  mind,  at  this  period,  of  philoso- 
phers and  Catholics,  of  Liberals  and  Conserva- 
tives. Cousin  here  displays  much  wide  and 
varied  information,  much  vigor  and  philo- 
sophic ingenuity,  and  true  eloquence.  On  the 
rare  occasions  upon  which  he  had  mounted 
the  tribune,  —  whether  he  was  intimidated  by 
the  auditory,  or  whether  the  subjects  of  which 
he  spoke  were  new  to  him,  —  he  had  made 
speeches  of  little  range  or  brilliancy,  approv- 
ing himself  neither  the  great  philosopher  nor 
the  great  orator  of  the  Sorbonne.  This  time 
his  whole  strength  was  revealed.  Never  did  an 
orator  display  more  elevation,  more  life,  more 
courage,  more  cogent  arguments,  more  irony, 
or  more  passion.  Although  he  defended  the 
University,  which  is  dear  to  me,  I  shall  not  say 
that  the  right  was  always  on  his  side.  It  is  his 
talent,  not  his  cause,  that  I  praise. 

Aside  from  the  attacks  of  the  Encyclope- 
dists, which  he  was  obliged  to  disregard,  —  this 
being  neither  the  place  nor  the  time  to  boast 
of  his  philosophic  daring,  —  he  replied  to  every 
attack  and  to  every  assailant:  to  M.  de  Monta- 
lembert,  who  demanded  liberty  of  instruction, 
and  was  indignant  at  the  monopoly;  to  M.  de 
Segur-Lamoignon  and  other  violent  Catholic 


His  Batiks.  177 

partisans,  who  slandered  his  teaching  and  his 
books ;  to  the  members  of  the  committee  and 
the  statesmen,  who  proposed  to  cut  down  the 
instruction  in  philosophy  and  to  preserve  it,  as 
it  were,  only  in  name.  He  was  so  clear  that 
the  philosophical  instruction  in  all  public  chairs 
depended  upon  him  and  was  inspired  by  him, 
—  he  declared  this  so  loudly  himself,  —  that  he 
appeared  at  the  bar,  so  to  say,  as  one  arraigned 
before  the  Upper  Chamber.  He  was  attacked 
at  every  turn,  often  bitterly,  sometimes  per- 
fidiously. There  was  a  series  of  indictments 
against  philosophy,  and  against  him  by  infer- 
ence, and  there  were  others  aimed  at  him  di- 
rectly and  personally.  But  he  soon  turned  the 
tables.  Received  at  first  with  a  certain  cool- 
ness seasoned  with  curiosity,  then  with  grow- 
ing favor,  he  soon  felt  himself  master  of  the 
assembly  and  vanquisher  of  his  adversaries. 
He  was  not  admitted  to  be  right  on  all  points, 
but  was  grudged  neither  admiration  nor  marks 
of  sympathy,  —  in  short,  he  had  the  glory  of 
preserving  philosophy  and  the  University  from 
threatened  ostracism. 

To  M.  de  Montalembert,  who  made  his 
maiden  speeches  in  the  Chamber  as  the  cham- 
pion of  free  instruction,  he  replied  with  as 
much  politeness  toward  the  person  as  arro- 
gance toward  the  doctrine,  that  it  could  not 


178  Victor  Cousin. 

be  granted.  Freedom  of  instruction  had  never 
existed  in  France.  There  had  been  no  trace 
of  it  either  under  the  Old  Regime  or  under  the 
Republic.  It  was  not  the  Empire  that  gave 
the  state  supreme  authority  in  all  that  relates 
to  instruction.  The  Empire  found  this  author- 
ity a  national  tradition,  and  strongly  organized 
it  for  the  glory  and  tranquillity  of  the  country. 
This  authority  the  state  cannot,  should  not  give 
up.  Not  only  does  the  state  itself  teach, — 
having  charge  of  souls  and  possessing  a  doc- 
trine,—  but  there  is  no  teaching  apart  from 
the  state  without  its  authority  and  consent. 
All  private  instruction  is  under  its  jurisdiction. 
Leibnitz  said  :  "  Give  me  control  of  education 
for  a  century,  and  I  shall  be  master  of  the 
state;"  Napoleon  was  fond  of  repeating  this: 
Cousin  repeats  it  after  them.  He  adds  explic- 
itly that  the  state  is  responsible  for  whatever 
it  allows  to  be  done,  as  well  as  for  whatever  it 
does  itself;  that  this  is  the  invariable  tradition 
of  the  old  monarchy  and  of  all  civilized  com- 
munities. Never  was  freedom  of  instruction 
denied  and  rejected  more  clearly  and  frankly. 
Cousin  does  not  even  dissemble  that  he  de- 
fends the  lay  authority  by  the  very  arguments 
employed  in  the  opposite  camp  to  defend  ec- 
clesiastical authority.  He  claims  for  the  state 
all  the  rights  that  the  Ultramontanes  claim  for 


His  Battles.  179 

the  Church.     He  defends,  therefore,  not  only 
the  University,  but  the  university  monopoly. 

On  this  point — I  have  already  had  occasion 
to  say  this,  while  deploring  it  —  he  had  all  the 
Liberals  of  the  time  on  his  side.  He  was  even 
more  favorable  to  private  instruction  than  many 
of  his  friends,  since  he  was  inclined  to  suppress 
the  certificate  of  studies.  He  voted  to  retain 
it  in  order  to  keep  pupils  from  the  Jesuits,  but 
none  the  less  he  was  opposed  to  its  principle. 
He  was,  accordingly,  the  most  liberal  of  Lib- 
erals ;  but  that  is  not  saying  that  he  was  really 
liberal  in  respect  to  instruction.  The  Liberals 
under  the  Restoration  had  but  one  dream,  — 
to  take  from  the  clergy  the  control  they  exer- 
cised over  education,  and  to  exercise  it  in  their 
stead.  The  Liberals  had  seized  control  after 
1830;  they  were  as  jealous  of  it  as  their  prede- 
cessors; they  exercised  it  with  the  same  secur- 
ity and  with  the  same  severity.  They  could 
not  play  this  part  so  well  as  the  Catholics, 
for  two  reasons :  because  they  could  not,  like 
the  Catholics,  claim  infallibility  and  call  them- 
selves the  possessors,  the  keepers,  of  the  truth ; 
and  because  they  styled  themselves  Liberals  at 
the  very  moment  when,  by  suppressing  free 
instruction,  they  confined  freedom  of  con- 
science to  that  inner  tribunal  on  which  no 
human  power  can  encroach.  M.  Cousin,  and 


180  Victor  Cousin. 

the  majority  in  the  Chamber  of  Peers,  did  not 
understand  freedom.  He  said  to  Montalem- 
bert:  "This  is  not  freedom  complaining,  it 
is  the  spirit  of  domination  murmuring."  All 
was  safe,  in  their  eyes,  if  the  University  had 
a  good  course  of  study  and  irreproachable 
instruction. 

But,  said  men  like  S^gur-Lamoignon,  Bar- 
thelemy  Sauvaire,  Beugnot,  Barthe,  and,  though 
with  many  reserves  and  compliments,  even  the 
Duke  de  Broglie,  university  instruction,  and 
even  university  administration,  which  is  but  a 
continuation  of  university  instruction,  instead 
of  calming  and  fortifying  the  mind,  merely 
agitates  and  disturbs  it.  "  You  teach  Carte- 
sianism,"  said  one,  "  and  that  is  methodical 
doubt."  "You  are  eclectic,"  said  another,  "and 
consequently  admit  all  doctrines;  and  this  is 
much  the  same  thing  as  to  reject  them  all." 
"All  your  efforts,"  it  was  said  in  several  quar- 
ters, "  end  in  raising  difficulties  which  you  are 
powerless  to  solve."  Then  came  the  everlast- 
ing argument  as  to  pantheism  :  "  M.  Cousin  has 
said  that  God  is  in  all  and  that  He  is  the  sub- 
stance of  all."  It  was  in  his  reply  to  all  these 
arguments  directed  against  his  philosophy,  that 
M.  Cousin  showed  his  real  superiority.  The 
danger  for  him  was  to  go  too  far  in  the  dis- 
cussion and  to  transform  the  Senate  into  a  kind 


His  Battles.  181 

of  academic  assembly.  He  confined  himself 
to  very  summary  but  strong  proofs,  which, 
without  giving  a  handle  to  subtle  criticism, 
carried  conviction  into  sincere  minds.  The 
exaggerations  and  sophisms  of  his  adversaries 
helped  him.  Was  it  not  a  proof  of  their  igno- 
rance to  see  in  methodic  doubt  a  step  toward 
scepticism?  Could  not  the  existence  of  God 
be  demonstrated,  after  the  example  of  Bossuet 
and  Fenelon,  without  raising  all  the  problems 
of  the  relations  of  cause  and  substance  with 
phenomena?  In  banishing  God  from  instruc- 
tion, even  from  elementary  instruction,  was 
there  not  a  risk  of  banishing  Him  from  men's 
hearts  and  consciences?  Every  one  around 
him  felt,  while  he  spoke,  how  perilous  it  was 
for  an  assembly  made  up  of  generals,  magis- 
trates, lawyers,  scholars,  and  a  single  professor 
of  philosophy,  to  plunge  into  metaphysical 
discussions ;  and  there  was  an  amendment  pro- 
posing to  have  the  philosophical  programme 
arranged  by  the  Cabinet !  There  was  a  great 
burst  of  laughter  when  Cousin  undertook  to 
describe  in  advance  the  Cabinet  meeting  in 
which  Marshal  Soult  should  give  his  opinion 
on  the  origin  of  our  ideas.  Cousin  came  out 
of  these  debates  with  greatly  increased  reputa- 
tion. The  whole  University  was  full  of  grati- 
tude, and  gave  noisy  evidence  of  it 


1 82  Victor  Cousin. 

Yet  there  was  one  grief  left  in  philosophers' 
hearts, — they  felt  that  on  certain  points  they 
had  been  defended  too  much.  Their  prudence 
had  been  too  completely  established;  they 
were  at  once  saved  and  disgraced.  They  were 
permitted  to  be  laymen,  —  that  was  some- 
thing; they  were  not  permitted  to  be  inde- 
pendent. After  stating  that  philosophy  had 
been  taught  in  France  for  five  hundred  years, 
and  that  Royer-Collard  had  taken  from  the 
ancient  University  the  programme  followed 
in  the  colleges  under  the  Restoration,  Cousin 
added,  speaking  of  himself,  that  far  from  ex- 
tending this  programme,  he  had  made  it  still 
more  limited.  And  it  was  true  !  Jouffroy  had 
been  the  spokesman  of  all  when  he  raised  his 
outcry  about  the  humbling  of  philosophy. 

I  conceived  the  idea  of  appealing  to  the 
great  masters  of  philosophy,  and  of  putting 
our  instruction  under  their  protection.  I  came 
to  an  understanding  with  my  friend  Charpen- 
tier,  the  publisher,  and  secured  the  collabo- 
ration of  Amedee  Jacques  and  Saisset.  The 
collection  was  to  consist  of  ten  volumes.  I 
straightway  published  a  volume  of  selections 
from  the  works  of  Descartes,  adding  a  pretty 
long  introduction.  Amedee  Jacques  published 
two  volumes  from  Leibnitz ;  Saisset  contributed 
Euler's  "  Letters."  We  were  in  the  field,  and 


His  Battles.  183 

our  little  collection  was  succeeding  very  well. 
The  selections  I  had  made  and  the  programme 
I  had  marked  out  were  much  commended. 
All  at  once,  I  received  a  letter  from  Cousin, 
summoning  me  to  his  lodgings  to  deliberate 
upon  the  Charpentier  collection.  I  mentioned 
the  matter  to  my  two  associates,  who  were  also 
summoned.  Jacques  was  greatly  astonished ; 
Saisset  less  so,  and  for  good  reason.  In  Cou- 
sin's library,  where  he  received  us,  we  found 
Franck,  Vacherot,  Riaux,  and  Bouillier.  Cou- 
sin informed  us  that  he  had  conceived  the  idea 
of  forming  a  collection,  that  he  had  prepared  a 
programme,  and  had  even  begun  work  upon  it. 
At  this  news  Jacques  and  I  were  more  amazed 
than  ever.  We  saw  the  time  when,  had  we 
not  signed  the  "  Descartes  "  and  the  "  Leib- 
nitz," we  should  have  been  led  to  abandon 
our  project.  The  principal  result  was  to  add 
to  the  list  of  authors  Father  Buffier  and  Father 
Andre,  of  whom,  I  confess,  I  should  never  have 
thought.  Cousin  took  upon  himself  the  pub- 
lication of  the  philosophic  works  of  Father 
Andre,  —  an  honor  to  us  as  great  as  it  was 
unexpected.  It  was  not  easy  to  escape  him. 

There  was  something  strange  about  this  way 
of  doing.  On  looking  back,  I  think  that  I  can 
explain  his  conduct,  which  harmonized  with  the 
whole-body  of  his  essentially  monarchical  views. 


184  Victor  Cousin. 

Attributing,  as  he  did,  complete  control  of  in- 
struction to  the  state,  it  was  quite  in  keeping 
with  his  political  doctrine  that  no  work  in- 
tended to  form  a  part  of  college  instruction,  and 
to  become  a  principal  instrument  in  it,  should 
be  outside  the  sphere  of  his  influence.  Thus 
he  dealt  with  M.  Franck's  "  Dictionary  of  the 
Philosophical  Sciences,"  —  but  this  time,  I  be- 
lieve, with  the  consent  and  at  the  request  of  the 
author  of  the  work,  to  whom  he  left  the  re- 
sponsibility and  the  honor.  When  I  thought 
of  editing  a  philosophical  review,  I  again  ap- 
pealed to  Jacques  and  Saisset,  and  Saisset  again 
ran  to  inform  M.  Cousin.  Jacques  and  I  were 
not  rebels,  still  less  ingrates;  we  were  half- 
smothered  disciples  in  quest  of  freedom  and 
independence.  Saisset  being  a  man  of  deep 
policy,  and  desiring  to  curry  favor  at  head- 
quarters, hastened  to  tell  Cousin  of  our  plans, 
and,  as  I  suppose,  of  our  hopes.  This  time 
we  were  angry  enough  to  break  with  Saisset. 
We  worked  with  a  will  to  get  out  our  first 
number,  and  christened  it  "  Free  Thought,"  — 
a  name  intended  to  perpetuate  our  autonomy, 
and  one  which  actually  secured  it.  The  name 
has  since  been  much  in  vogue,  though  some- 
what changed  in  meaning.  To-day,  in  current 
speech,  freethinker  means  atheist,  and  this  is 
the  opposite  of  what  we  were,  —  Jacques  and  I. 


His  Battles.  185 

I  need  not  tell  here  how  I  was  for  a  year  — 
either  over  my  signature,  or  in  articles  un- 
signed, or  signed  with  an  assumed  name  —  the 
most  active  contributor  to  this  review,  and  how 
I  was  turned  out  one  fine  morning  by  my  own 
friends,  on  the  pretext  that  I  was  too  reaction- 
ary for  their  new  aspirations.  M.  Cousin  was 
much  displeased  with  this  publication.  He 
did  not  manifest  his  disapproval  so  bluntly  as 
I  thought  he  would.  Had  this  review  survived, 
and  had  I  continued  in  charge,  it  would  cer- 
tainly have  been  respectful  to  him ;  but  it  would 
have  assured  the  independence  of  professors  of 
philosophy.  They  would  have  ceased  to  be 
echoes,  and  would  have  become  persons. 

It  disappeared.  In  those  days  everything 
was  foundering  and  vanishing.  M.  Cousin 
had,  in  1849,  one  more  great  interval  of  ad- 
ministrative activity,  and  it  was  the  last.  He 
was  a  member  of  the  Commission  appointed 
by  M.  de  Falloux  to  prepare  the  law  of  1850. 
This  commission  was  composed  of  twenty-six 
members,  among  whom  there  were  perhaps 
five  University  men  and  two  or  three  Liberals. 
M.  Thiers  was  chairman.  The  deliberations 
were  scarcely  more  than  a  dialogue  between 
him  and  M.  Dupanloup.  M.  Dupanloup  had 
a  considerable  majority ;  but  M.  Thiers,  though 
in  the  minority,  had  first  his  personal  weight 


1 86  Victor  Cousin. 

and  then  his  authority  in  the  Chamber.  With- 
out his  aid,  M.  de  Falloux  and  his  commission 
could  do  nothing. 

M.  Thiers  began  with  the  avowed  desire 
to  form  an  alliance  with  the  Catholics  and  to 
make  use  of  them  to  save  imperilled  society. 
He  thought  it  more  imperilled  than  it  was. 
Whether  it  was  in  peril  or  not,  he  was  the  man 
to  defend  it.  He  had  defended  it  by  his  books 
and  speeches,  and  he  now  wished  to  defend  it 
by  an  alliance  with  the  bishops.  This  was  a 
new  phase  in  his  life.  It  was  also  a  new  phase 
in  the  history  of  Catholicism,  which,  in  order 
to  destroy  the  university  monopoly,  was  mak- 
ing an  ardent  appeal  to  liberty.  To  accept 
liberty  of  instruction,  and  to  form  a  league 
with  the  clergy,  were,  in  1849,  one  and  the  same 
thing.  How  very  far  from  the  Inquisition ! 
M.  Thiers  wrote  to  M.  Madier  de  Montjau, 
father  of  the  present  deputy  of  that  name : 
"  Touching  liberty  of  instruction,  my  position 
is  changed.  It  is  changed,  not  from  any  revo- 
lution in  my  convictions,  but  from  a  revolution 
in  the  social  state.  When  the  University,  rep- 
resenting the  good  and  sensible  French  middle 
class,  taught  our  children  according  to  Rollin's 
methods,  and  gave  preference  to  the  sound  old 
classical  studies  over  the  physical  and  wholly 
material  studies  of  those  who  cry  up  profes- 


His  Batiks.  187 

sional  instruction,  then,  indeed,  I  was  willing  to 
sacrifice  liberty  of  instruction." 

This  is  quite  in  the  spirit  of  the  old  Liberals, 
to  whom  facts  were  everything  and  principles 
almost  nothing.  The  convert  did  not,  how- 
ever, yield  as  much  as  was  desired,  but  he 
yielded  much.  He  not  only  agreed  to  liberty 
of  instruction,  —  at  which  I  rejoice  because  I 
have  always  desired!  and  defended  it,  —  but  he 
submitted  to  the  curtailment  of  the  University, 
a  course  warranted  neither  by  facts  nor  by 
principles.  -M.  Dupanloup,  seconded  by  M. 
de  Montalembert,  demanded  in  the  name  of 
freedom  a  return  to  clerical  rule.  M.  Thiers, 
seconded  by  M.  Cousin,  preserved  some  ves- 
tiges of  the  University,  but  to  do  this  required 
all  the  authority  of  the  one  and  all  the  elo- 
quence of  the  other.  At  certain  moments 
in  the  discussion  a  rupture  was  imminent. 
Among  other  things,  the  Catholics  wished  to 
give  the  religious  societies  exclusive  charge  of 
primary  instruction.  Cousin  pleaded  energeti- 
cally for  lay  teachers,  and  succeeded  in  saving 
them  from  exclusion.  For  secondary  instruc- 
tion, M.  de  Falloux  and  his  friends  wished  to 
recall  the  Jesuits ;  but  M.  Thiers  and  M.  Cousin 
opposed  this  with  so  much  energy  that  it  had 
to  be  given  up.  M.  Dupanloup  proposed  to 
sayr-"  the  societies  recognized  by  the  Church." 


1 88  Victor  Cousin. 

"No,"  said  Cousin,  "we  must  put,  'recognized 
by  the  Church  and  by  the  State.'  "  This  brought 
the  discussion  to  bear  upon  the  Jesuits,  a  so- 
ciety not  recognized  by  the  State.  The  Cath- 
olics, defeated  touching  the  recall  of  the  Jesuits, 
demanded  at  least  silence.  If  the  Jesuits  were 
not  mentioned  in  the  law,  M.  de  Falloux  would 
admit  them ;  after  him,  we  should  see.  By 
taking  this  ground  they  carried  their  point, 
after  a  very  sharp  discussion.  It  was  not  very 
brave  on  their  part,  nor  very  honest  on  the 
part  of  the  others. 

On  the  whole,  the  law  of  1850  was  looked 
upon  by  the  Catholics  as  a  triumph  and  by  the 
University  as  a  defeat.  The  University  blamed 
M.  Thiers,  who  had  been  its  champion  in  1842, 
and  M.  Cousin,  upon  whom  it  had  staked  all 
its  hopes.  It  was  known  that  he  had  defended 
the  University  and  had  fought  the  Jesuits ;  but 
he  had  yielded  touching  the  certificate  of 
studies,  degrees,  examining  boards,  touching 
the  very  name  of  the  University,  and  touching 
the  Jesuits  themselves.  Silence  was  all  that 
he  had  granted  to  the  Jesuits,  but  the  Jesuits 
were  satisfied ;  silence,  with  M.  de  Falloux  in 
the  ministry,  was  for  them  a  permission  to 
return  and  to  teach.  To  this  compromise 
Cousin  had  made  himself  a  party.  Moreover, 
he  had  become  the  enthusiastic  apologist  of 


His  Battles.  189 

the  other  societies,  —  though  they  were  hardly 
more  acceptable  to  the  University  than  the 
Jesuits,  —  and  had  renewed  his  time-worn  dec- 
lamations concerning  the  two  immortal  sis- 
ters. In  all  this  there  was  nothing  popular, — 
least  of  all  liberty  of  instruction.  I  was  per- 
haps its  only  defender  in  the  University,  with 
the  single  exception  of  the  former  editor  of 
"  The  Globe,"  M.  Dubois,  who  had  sat  in  the 
Commission,  but  had  taken  no  part  in  the 
debates. 

By  the  events  of  the  close  of  the  year  1851, 
which  changed  everything  in  France,  our  little 
philosophical  circle  was  scattered.  Philosoph- 
ical teaching  disappeared  even  in  name ;  the 
colleges  retained  nothing  but  a  class  in  logic. 
Of  course  Cousin  had  lost  his  regiment. 

Jacques  went  to  meet  death  in  South  America. 
I  abandoned  teaching  rather  than  take  oath 
to  the  Empire.  The  newspapers  were  closed 
to  us.  These  were  hard  times,  especially  for 
those  who  had  to  work  for  their  daily  bread. 
I  continued  to  see  M.  Cousin,  but  more  rarely. 
I  had  supplied  his  place  for  more  than  ten 
years;  his  place  was  now  supplied  by  one  of 
my  pupils,  an  abler  man  than  I,  and  one  with 
whom  he  had  reason  to  be  better  satisfied. 
Cousin's  great  admiration  for  the  Empire  con- 
tributed to  estrange  us  from  each  other.  But 


i  go  Victor  Cousin. 

he  did  not  take  office  under  it.  He  might  have 
done  so  if  he  would;  the  Empire  would  have 
lavished  upon  him  all  its  honors  and  emolu- 
ments. He  deemed  retirement  the  worthier 
course.  He  had  resigned  all  his  offices,  and 
now  his  only  connection  with  the  University 
was  his  title,  and  his  stipend  as  a  professor  at 
the  Sorbonne.  In  1852  he  finally  threw  this 
up.  He  kept  his  lodgings  in  the  Sorbonne. 
He  could  not  remove  his  library,  and  would 
not  have  desired  to  do  so  if  he  could,  because 
he  had  set  his  heart  on  leaving  it  intact  to  the 
University.  Nearly  all  of  his  friends  were  in 
exile ;  the  exile  of  M.  Thiers,  whom  he  re- 
gretted most  of  all,  lasted  for  a  year.  Cousin 
lived  in  his  library  and  in  the  Academies, 
meeting  the  friends  of  his  youth,  especially 
M.  Mignet,  with  whom  he  lamented  the  absence 
of  M.  Thiers.  He  did  not  abandon  his  phi- 
losophers, Barth61emy  Saint-Hilaire,  Franck, 
Vacherot,  Bouillier;  or  their  juniors,  M.  Caro, 
M.  Paul  Janet,  M.  Charles  Waddington.  But 
though  he  did  not  abandon  the  philosophers, 
he  rather  forsook  philosophy.  In  the  latter 
years  of  his  life  he  hardly  published  anything 
except  literary  works.  To  conclude  these  rec- 
ollections, I  proceed  rather  to  name  than  to 
analyze  these  works. 


CHAPTER  V. 

HIS   LOVES. 

I  ONCE  heard  M.  Cousin  say  to  a  philoso- 
pher who  thought  of  deserting  to  the  camp 
of  historical  criticism :  "  Do  not  scatter  your- 
self, nolite  exspatiari;  keep  on  ploughing  the 
same  furrow;  give  yourself  the  merit  and  the 
benefit  of  perseverance.  If  you  write  on  all 
subjects,  you  may  show  the  flexibility  of  your 
mind;  you  will  not  show  its  strength.  One 
must  have  a  career,  and  give  unity  to  one's 
life." 

Cousin  made  so  great  a  mark  in  philosophy 
that  he  may  be  said  to  have  himself  remained 
faithful  to  this  precept.  He  could  with  impu- 
nity compose  works  on  literary  and  erudite 
subjects;  he  was  none  the  less,  for  his  con- 
temporaries and  for  posterity,  a  philosopher. 
Those  who  think  he  was  less  a  philosopher 
than  a  philosophical  preacher,  and  that  what 
he,  like  Cicero,  especially  loved  in  philosophy 
was  a  kind  of  noble  and  attractive  literature, 
will  say  that  his  digressions  were  very  long; 


1 92  Victor  Cousin. 

that  they  consumed  almost  a  third  of  his  intel- 
lectual life ;  and  that  when  he  had  once  entered 
upon  the  study  of  the  seventeenth  century,  he 
derived  from  it  so  many  fine  stories  and  curious 
portraits  that  he  really  appeared  to  enjoy  the 
intercourse  of  Madame  de  Longueville  as  much 
as  that  of  Xenophanes  and  Proclus.  The  fact 
is,  that  he  wrote  no  less  than  nine  volumes  on 
the  women  and  the  society  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  I  try  to  discover  how  he  was  led  to 
it.  Sometimes  a  chance  incident  is  enough  to 
give  birth  to  a  book.  The  finding  of  a  manu- 
script of  Abelard  in  a  provincial  library  calls 
M.  Cousin's  attention  to  that  scholastic  hero, 
whose  story  is  more  moving  than  his  writings. 
At  another  time  a  manuscript  by  Pascal  falls 
into  his  hands,  and  furnishes  him  with  an  op- 
portunity to  show  that  behind  the  Pascal  we 
possessed  there  exists  another  Pascal,  greater 
and  more  genuine.  I  might  cite  as  another 
instance  the  discovery  of  the  letters  of  Male- 
branche,  revealing  Father  Andr6  to  him,  and 
bringing  us  an  interesting  little  book.  Yet 
Cousin  is  not  governed  by  whim :  with  him 
reflection  is  supreme;  nor  does  it  govern 
merely  the  movement  of  his  thought,  —  he 
undertakes  each  work  at  the  proper  time,  and, 
to  borrow  his  own  expression,  he  gives  unity 
to  his  life.  When  the  reaction  of  1820  gave 


His  Loves.  193 

him  leisure,  he  issued  a  translation  and  two 
editions,  but  of  whom?  Of  Plato,  of  Proclus, 
and  of  Descartes,  his  three  inspirers,  his  three 
masters.  Having  thus  balanced  his  account 
with  the  past,  he  set  out  for  Germany,  where, 
he  says,  Kant  had  produced  a  philosophical 
revolution  as  great  as  our  political  Revolution 
of  1789;  and  here  he  found  his  two  new  mas- 
ters, Schelling  and  Fichte. 

I  think  it  was  Pascal  who  began  to  turn 
him  aside  from  philosophy  properly  so  called. 
What!  a  philosopher?  Yes,  and  a  very  great 
one ;  but  one  who  was  somewhat  nervous,  some- 
what out  of  sorts,  a  great  invalid ;  the  honor 
and  the  scourge  of  philosophy;  tormented  by 
our  weak  reason,  to  which  he  gives  a  vigorous 
and  tragical  shock  without  being  able  either  to 
destroy  it  or  to  get  rid  of  it.  Cousin  thought 
about  Pascal  for  a  whole  year,  and  wrote 
on  Pascal  a  book  even  more  elegant  than 
philosophic,  —  an  altogether  peerless  critical 
monograph.  With  this  book  is  connected  an 
episode  in  his  life  which,  while  not  to  be  ex- 
aggerated, is  not  greatly  to  his  honor,  —  an 
episode  that  made  a  terrible  noise  for  a  whole 
term.  The  tale  is  really  a  trifling  one. 

Among  Jouffroy's  papers  had  been  found 
material  for  a  volume  of  "  Miscellanies."  The 
widow.intrusted  these  manuscripts  to  Damiron, 

13 


194  Victor  Cousin. 

the  faithful  friend  of  the  deceased,  —  Damiron, 
whom  Cousin  called  "  the  wisest  of  the  wise," 
a  man  whom  no  one  knew  without  loving  him. 
The  most  important  of  these  manuscripts  was 
a  kind  of  autobiography,  in  which  Jouffroy 
spoke  especially  of  the  history  of  his  mind. 
This  piece  passed  from  hand  to  hand  among 
the  faithful  before  being  printed,  and  we  were 
all  charmed  and  touched  by  it,  for  it  disclosed 
all  the  candor  and  all  the  elevation  of  this 
choice  spirit.  Damiron  offered  it  to  the 
"  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes "  which  eagerly 
accepted  it,  and  an  agreement  was  made  with 
Buloz  that  I  should  carefully  re-read  the  man- 
uscript and  correct  the  proofs.  I  did  so.  A 
day  or  two  before  the  review  was  to  appear, 
Damiron  came  up  to  my  room  to  get  the 
proof-sheets,  already  marked  "Ready  for  press," 
and  carried  them  away  to  take  a  last  look  at 
them. 

It  was  Saturday.  On  leaving  me  he  went  to 
a  session  of  the  Academy  of  Moral  Sciences, 
where  he  sat  beside  Cousin.  Entering,  he 
places  his  hat  before  him,  with  the  proofs  in 
it.  Cousin,  who  as  usual  had  an  eye  to  every- 
thing, catches  sight  of  the  printed  proofs. 
"What  have  you  there?"  "  Jouffroy's  me- 
moir, that  I  told  you  of,  and  that  you  would 
not  read  in  manuscript."  The  session  being  un- 


His  Loves.  195 

interesting,  Cousin  takes  up  the  memoir  and 
looks  it  over.  He  immediately  stumbles  upon 
that  oft-repeated  passage,  in  which  Jouffroy, 
speaking  of  his  stay  at  the  Normal  School  and 
of  his  studies  there,  complains  that  all  the  talk 
was  of  the  origin  of  ideas,  and  that  nothing  was 
said  of  the  problem  of  human  destiny,  which 
was  even  then  —  and  throughout  his  life  — 
his  chief  preoccupation.  "  Philosophy  was  in 
a  hole."  And  he  concluded  with  these  words : 
"All  this  was  due  to  the  ignorance  of  our 
young  master."  Does  this  not  appear  very 
innocent?  It  was  all  the  more  innocent  be- 
cause Jouffroy,  though  he  did  not  then  see 
the  importance  of  the  problem  of  the  origin 
of  ideas,  was  not  long  in  finding  it  out,  and 
in  becoming  absorbed  in  it,  like  his  "  young 
master."  This  young  master  was  Cousin,  who 
had  entered  upon  the  teaching  of  philosophy 
before  being  a  philosopher.  In  the  France  of 
that  day  he  could  not  have  done  otherwise. 
Jouffroy's  simple  and  true  phrase,  which  had 
struck  no  one,  and  would  probably  have  passed 
unnoticed,  seemed  to  Cousin  a  mortal  insult. 
How  could  Jouffroy  have  written  it?  And 
how  could  Damiron  —  and  others  —  have  let 
it  stand?  "You  must  leave  it  out."  "No 
such  thing.  I  can  round  out  an  unfinished 
phrase,  set  an  incorrect  phrase  upon  its  legs; 


196  Victor  Cousin. 

but  change  the  author's  thought  I  cannot, 
ought  not,  will  not."  And  Damiron  under- 
took the  task  —  easy  enough  with  any  other 
person  —  of  showing  Cousin  that  this  criticism, 
if  it  was  one,  was  quite  inoffensive,  and  that  his 
fame  would  not  suffer  from  it.  Cousin  did  not 
take  the  trouble  to  discuss  it.  He  went  straight 
to  Madame  Jouffroy,  who  only  knew  that  her 
husband  had  been  the  pupil  and  the  friend  of 
Cousin,  and  would  not  willingly  have  offended 
him,  and  that,  if  the  phrase  was  too  harsh,  it 
must  be  a  hasty  expression  which  her  husband 
himself  would  not  have  failed  to  correct.  The 
phrase  was  corrected;  it  was  a  very  small 
matter,  —  one  expression  instead  of  another,  a 
retouch  that  from  all  possible  points  of  view  it 
would  have  been  better  not  to  make.  Damiron 
resisted  obstinately,  and  Buloz  made  a  great 
ado ;  but  Madame  Jouffroy,  for  whom  Cousin 
was  at  that  very  time  soliciting  a  pension,  im- 
posed her  will,  and  the  article  appeared  without 
the  offensive  word.  On  the  very  same  day  the 
whole  story  was  published  by  Pierre  Leroux, 
who  had  been  on  the  watch,  and  the  following 
month  his  articles  were  collected  in  a  little 
work  entitled  "The  Mutilation  of  Jouffroy's 
Manuscripts  by  the  Eclectics."  Cousin,  to 
avoid  a  pin-prick,  had  wantonly  incurred  a 
great  scandal.  He  who  suffered  most  from 


His  Loves.  197 

it,  and  suffered  cruelly,  was  the  innocent 
Damiron. 

It  has  been  said — and  I  believe  it  —  that  it 
was  with  the  desire  to  create  a  diversion,  that 
Cousin  began  his  campaign  against  the  friends 
of  Pascal  who  were  guilty  of  mutilating  his 
writings  after  his  death.  He  loudly  maintained 
that  no  one  can  change  a  syllable  in  a  post- 
humous publication  without  infringing  the 
rights  of  the  dead  and  the  rights  of  the  hu- 
man mind,  the  master  and  owner  of  great 
works  as  soon  as  produced.  To  this  noble  zeal 
we  are  indebted  for  an  admirable  dissertation. 
Cousin  first  read  it  to  the  French  Academy, 
and  before  long  brought  it  out  in  a  book 
that  has  given  rise  to  several  fine  editions  of 
Pascal's  "  Thoughts."  The  idea  of  accusing 
him,  after  that,  of  taking  liberties  with  Jouffroy's 
prose ! 

In  reading  this  dissertation  on  the  need  of 
a  new  edition  of  Pascal's  "  Thoughts,"  we  are 
impressed  by  three  things, —  the  correctness 
and  breadth  of  Cousin's  literary  knowledge,  the 
evident  pleasure  he  takes  in  treating  aesthetic 
and  critical  questions,  and  his  scholarly  passion 
for  fine  editions  and  for  the  discovery  of  va- 
riants and  of  manuscripts.  His  library,  which 
he  presented  to  the  University,  is  the  best  pre- 
served, and  one  of  the  most  valuable  in  Paris, 


198  Victor  Cousin. 

and  attests  that  philosophy  did  not  absorb 
all  his  affections.  He  was  very  rich  in  fine 
engravings,  in  original  editions,  in  the  classics 
ancient  and  modern,  —  chiefly  in  seventeenth- 
century  classics;  these  he  put  in  the  place  of 
honor  in  the  finest  bindings,  setting  the  rarest 
editions  beside  the  luxurious  editions.  I  wish 
that  my  friend  Barthelemy  Saint-Hilaire,  as 
a  relaxation  after  publishing  a  fine  transla- 
tion of  Aristotle  in  twenty  volumes,  would  give 
himself  the  pleasure  and  do  us  the  service  of 
writing  a  descriptive  catalogue  of  this  library. 
It  would  be  a  whole  chapter  in  M.  Cousin's  life. 
There  is  not  one  of  these  volumes  that  he  has 
not  a  hundred  times  handled,  turned  over  and 
over,  taken  down,  consulted.  Many  of  them 
cost  him  prolonged  hunts,  long  scenes  in  the 
back  shops  of  booksellers,  miracles  of  diplo- 
macy, and  at  a  pinch  even  a  few  lies.  As  for 
money,  —  a  thing  he  was  not  lavish  of,  —  he 
always  had  some  for  his  books.  He  was  a 
favorite  with  all  the  book-mongers.  There 
wc?re  battles  to  be  fought  before  getting  his 
last  word  and  his  money ;  but  more  than  one 
among  them  is  a  scholar  and  an  artist;  and 
such  a  man  prefers  a  tilt  with  a  scholar  and 
an  artist  like  Cousin,  to  the  money  of  an  igno- 
ramus who  buys  a  curious  book  for  vanity  and 
not  for  love. 


His  Loves.  199 

When  the  Duchess  of  Orleans  came  to  France, 
Cousin  learned  that  she  had  named  him  in  the 
very  foremost  rank  of  our  great  men.  You 
may  imagine  how  proud  he  was.  "  I  shall 
offer  her  one  of  my  works."  He  might  offer 
the  Princess  Helene  his  "  Lectures  on  Kant " 
or  his  "  Philosophical  Fragments " :  she  was 
competent  to  read  them.  He  thought  it  more 
gallant  to  give  her  his  "  Report  on  Public  In- 
struction in  Prussia,"  and  happily,  as  he  had 
presented  it  to  the  King,  there  remained  one 
copy  on  Holland  paper.  For  the  first  time,  he 
told  Beauzonnet  to  give  himself  free  scope. 
They  two  planned  to  make  a  peerless  binding. 
The  finest  skins  were  examined,  the  quality  of 
different  kinds  of  gilt  was  tested,  tools  were 
made  on  purpose.  The  very  case  must  be  a 
masterpiece.  On  one  side  were  to  be  seen  the 
arms  of  France,  on  the  other  those  of  Meck- 
lenburg-Schwerin.  Within,  the  arms  were 
quartered.  Nothing  could  equal  the  fineness 
of  the  tracery,  the  elegance  and  just  propor- 
tion of  the  ornamentation.  It  took  time ;  the 
Duchess  had  come,  and  had  given  Cousin  a 
very  gracious  reception,  and  the  book  was  still 
in  the  binder's  hands.  At  last  the  day  came 
when  all  was  complete.  The  book  was  trans- 
ported, with  immense  precaution,  from  Beau- 
zonnet's  shop  to  the  Sorbonne,  and  installed 


2OO  Victor  Cousin. 

by  itself  upon  a  table  in  the  midst  of  the  large 
library  room.  Thither  the  great  connoisseurs 
were  invited  to  see  it.  Techener  was  sum- 
moned, De  Sacy,  Charles  Nodier,  Libri,  who 
lived  across  the  street ;  also  Cousin's  associates 
in  the  French  Academy,  but  not  all,  —  only 
those  who  had  claims.  After  these,  friends  of 
importance  took  their  turn ;  and  after  all  the 
rest,  we  ourselves,  pretending  to  be  judges  and 
to  go  into  transports  of  admiration.  This  pro- 
cession lasted  so  long,  that  one  day  we  asked 
ourselves,  and  we  asked  Cousin,  when  it  would 
be  over.  Upon  my  word,  he  sought  out  no 
pretext;  he  simply  began  to  laugh,  and  con- 
fessed that  he  could  not  make  up  his  mind  to 
part  with  so  rare  a  masterpiece.  Yet  it  is  not 
now  among  his  books:  as  for  the  poor  prin- 
cess, she  did  not  get  it. 

I  could  better  understand  Cousin's  enthu- 
siasm for  bringing  out  fine  unpublished  works. 
M.Taine,  who  gives  him  high  praise  for  having 
this  passion,  and  for  more  than  once  arousing 
it  in  others,  cites  a  page  of  his  in  which  he 
adjures  the  possessors  of  Malebranche's  letters 
to  publish  them.  "  They  commit  a  robbery  by 
condemning  these  letters  to  oblivion,"  said  he. 
"  They  are  our  rightful  due,  —  the  patrimony 
of  all  men  of  letters.  If  the  proprietor  of  these 
manuscripts  dreads  the  expense,  I  will  defray 


His  Loves.  201 

it.  If  he  needs  an  introduction  or  notes,  I  am 
ready."  This  passage  reminds  me  of  an  anec- 
dote that  bibliophiles  ought  to  know. 

A  sale  of  Malebranche  autographs  was  an- 
nounced. Cousin  hastened  to  it  The  manu- 
script is  authentic ;  he  must  have  it  A  first 
bid.  A  bookseller  carelessly  makes  another. 
Cousin  would  fain  advance  rapidly,  but  restrains 
his  ardor,  increasing  the  bid  little  by  little,  so 
as  not  to  disclose  the  immensity  of  his  desire. 
The  other  man — always  so  reserved  and 
calm  —  comes  steadily  after  him.  By  little  and 
little  a  large  sum  is  reached.  Cousin  begins 
to  tremble.  He  questions  the  bookseller,  he 
gazes  at  the  audience.  Finally,  the  real  pur- 
chaser enters  the  room.  Cousin  at  once  detects 
him.  "  What  use  could  you  make  of  it  ?  "  And 
he  lectures  his  man  on  the  necessity  of  put- 
ting such  a  treasure  into  good  hands,  —  a 
great  oversight  on  the  part  of  such  a  diplo- 
matist !  The  more  he  insists,  the  more  reso- 
lute is  his  rival.  It  is  impossible  to  compete 
with  that  long  purse.  Cousin  is  obliged  to 
yield.  The  bookseller  receives  the  precious 
pages  and  hands  them  over  to  his  happy  client 
Straightway  Cousin  changes  his  tactics.  "  Are 
you  going  to  publish  this?  "  "  By  no  means !  " 
Then  follows  the  whole  passage  cited  with 
many  developments  by  M.  Taine :  "  Permit 


2O2  Victor  Cousin. 

me  to  ride  in  your  carriage."  "  A  great  honor 
for  me."  Cousin  follows  the  buyer  to  his  li- 
brary and  plies  him  with  compliments.  "  Here, 
I  suppose,  is  your  previous  conquest!"  "I 
have  something  better  than  that."  "Where 
is  it?  "  "  There ;  admire  it !  "  "  This  did  not 
come  from  the  auction  sale.  How  did  you 
get  it?"  "That  is  my  secret!"  "Apropos 
of  the  Malebranche  [returning  to  the  sub- 
ject while  the  other  firmly  awaited  the  attack], 
these  letters  were  written  previously  to  'The 
Search  after  Truth.'  There  is  in  them  a  pas- 
sage that  may  be  regarded  as  the  first  glim- 
mer of  an  opinion  —  "  "  What  opinion?  " 
"  That  is  my  secret.  Are  you  willing  to  pub- 
lish it?  I  will  make  you  a  preface."  "  And 
the  trouble  I  have  taken  to-day  will  be  all  for 
you  ?  "  "  No ;  I  will  make  you  a  present  of  my 
prose.  You  shall  publish  it  under  your  own 
name."  "  Only  that  everybody  may  recognize 
it  as  yours  !  "  Cousin  had  no  hope.  He  knew 
his  man  too  well,  and  was  aware  that  he  could 
not  get  the  better  of  such  obstinacy.  He  was 
fighting  for  honor,  lest  it  should  be  said  that  he 
had  not  stoutly  held  out  against  the  enemy. 
"  Lend  it  to  me,"  said  he,  heaving  great  sighs. 
"  Do  me  the  kindness  to  come  and  consult  it 
here;  my  study  shall  be  at  your  service." 
Then  followed  fresh  negotiations,  in  which,  at 


His  Loves.  203 

last,  Cousin  half  retrieved  the  day.  The  man- 
uscript —  which  was  voluminous  —  was  lent  to 
him,  upon  his  solemn  promise  to  return  it  the 
next  day  before  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning. 
Night  had  fallen ;  Cousin  could  read  it  only 
by  lamplight.  He  departed  with  the  precious 
treasure.  Four  Normal  School  pupils,  straight- 
way placed  in  requisition,  passed  the  night  in 
copying  it.  To  give  them  stomach  for  the 
task,  Madame  Blanchard  made  for  them  some 
of  her  famous  cabbage  soup.  At  the  stroke  of 
ten,  Cousin  placed  the  manuscript  in  the  hands 
of  its  owner  who  was  mirch  relieved,  and  com- 
plimented him  on  his  punctuality.  Cousin 
feigned  indifference,  spoke  of  other  matters, 
and  said,  as  he  \vas  going  out,  "  When  do  you 
publish?"  "Why,  I  told  you,"  replied  the 
other.  "  My  resolution  is  unchanged."  "That 
being  the  case,"  rejoined  Cousin,  "  I  shall  offer 
you  a  large-paper  copy  in  one  month  from 
now."  His  interlocutor  could  only  bite  his 
lip,  in  the  consciousness  that  he  had  been 
outwitted.  There  was  nothing  for  it  except 
to  show  himself  a  generous  friend  of  letters. 
This  he  did,  and  did  it  well. 

Cousin  had  been  ushered  by  Pascal  into  the 
study  of  French  society  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  The  relations  of  Descartes  were 
rathep  to  foreign  countries  than  to  France. 


2O4  Victor  Cousin. 

With  Pascal  it  was  different.  This  devotee 
and  fanatic  was  a  man  of  the  world.  Through 
him  Cousin  became  acquainted  with  Mademoi- 
selle de  Roannez,  and  above  all  with  Jacque- 
line. It  might  be  said  that  in  accordance  with 
his  mania  for  making  elaborate  researches,  he 
studied  Pascal  in  her.  This  first  book  on  the 
women  of  the  seventeenth  century  may  in  a 
manner  pass  for  a  philosophic  work,  because 
of  the  heroine's  name  and  profession.  But  it 
was  already  evident  that  Cousin  was  smitten ; 
that  he  would  not  abide  in  cloisters  ;  that,  phi- 
losopher though  he  was,  or  had  been,  he  would 
frequent  the  boudoirs.  As  the  reader  knows, 
great  lords  were  not  the  only  ones  admitted 
there,  —  pedants  were  also  received  for  the 
love  of  Greek.1  But  this  pedant  did  not  talk 
like  Manage  (or  rather  Vadius)  ;  he  was  of 
kin  to  the  greatest  wits. 

To  Madame  de  Longueville,  Madame  de  Sa- 
ble", Madame  de  Chevreuse,  Madame  de  Haute- 
fort,  one  after  the  other,  he  gave  new  life ;  yes, 
new  life,  in  spite  of  all  that  may  be  said,  and 
notwithstanding  his  display  of  erudition.  If  he 
leaves  biography  to  give  a  picture  of  French 

1  The  pedant  Vadius,  supposed  to  be  a  caricature  of  Ma- 
dame de  Sevigne's  celebrated  tutor,  Menage,  is  admitted 
by  Moliere  into  the  company  of  the  "  Learned  Ladies  "  "  for 
the  love  of  Greek."  ("  Femmes  Savantes,"  iii.  5.)  —  Tr. 


His  Loves.  205 

society  in  the  seventeenth  century,  he  takes 
pains  to  inform  you  that  this  is  the  society  of 
the  precieuses,  and  that  he  will  base  his  work 
upon  "  Cyrus  the  Great."  The  nine  volumes 
thus  published  by  Cousin  form  an  agreeable 
but  singular  sequel  to  his  eight  volumes  on  the 
"  History  of  Philosophy,"  his  five  volumes  of 
"  Philosophic  Fragments,"  his  editions  of  the 
Proclus  manuscripts  and  of  Abelard's  "  Sic  et 
Non." 

From  this  time  on,  Cousin  confines  him- 
self definitively  to  the  seventeenth  century,  of 
which  he  was  passionately  fond,  and  to  the 
first  part  of  the  century,  the  heroic  and  tur- 
bulent part,  which  he  evidently  prefers  to  the 
more  faultless  and  more  orderly  society  domi- 
nant in  Europe  under  Louis  XIV.  He  might 
have  devoted  himself  to  the  heroes,  or  to  the 
preachers,  —  since  he  is  of  their  trade,  —  or  to 
the  great  writers;  but  no,  he  is  attracted  by 
the  women,  and  no  longer  by  devout  and  aus- 
tere women  like  Jacqueline,  but  by  the  great 
inamoratas  and  the  fair  penitents.  He  fre- 
quents the  salon  and  the  boudoir  rather  than 
the  cloister.  Does  he  compose  a  book  on 
Mazarin,  it  is  to  study  that  statesman's  youth, 
when  Mazarin  tested  on  the  women  of  the 
court  the  political  genius  by  which  he  was  to 
succeed  as  well  as  Richelieu,  without  having  to 


206  Victor  Cousin. 

strike  as  many  hard  blows.  A  few  years  before, 
when  Cousin  was  translating  Plato,  comment- 
ing on  Xenophanes,  editing  Proclus,  who  would 
have  said  that  with  advancing  years  he  would 
bury  himself  in  "Cyrus  the  Great," — to  rise 
no  more;  that  he  would  be  conversant  with 
the  sayings  and  opinions  of  Mademoiselle  de 
Scudery ;  that  he  would  be  interested  not  only 
in  great  passions  and  great  adventures,  but  in 
the  tastes  and  fancies  of  gay  ladies ;  that  his 
curiosity  would  ransack  the  folds  of  their 
hearts ;  that  it  would  be  a  literary  commonplace 
to  represent  him  as  the  posthumous  lover  of 
Madame  de  Longueville  ?  He  is  the  only 
man,  apparently,  of  whom  it  may  be  said  that 
he  loved  a  mistress  who  had  been  dead  these 
two  hundred  years.  He  simply  paid  his  ad- 
dresses to  a  captivating  woman  who,  as  became 
the  sister  of  the  great  Conde,  had  some  traces 
of  her  brother's  undisciplined  temper.  M. 
Taine,  who  wrote  about  M.  Cousin  a  most  bril- 
liant, most  witty,  most  profound,  and  most 
malevolent  book,  says  very  humorously  that 
Cousin  fancied  himself  the  brother-in-law  of 
Conde  and  the  rival  of  La  Rochefoucauld.  The 
fact  is,  that  this  history  of  Madame  de  Longue- 
ville, in  spite  of  a  bibliographical  display  per- 
haps slightly  out  of  place  but  certainly  very 
amusing  to  those  acquainted  with  M.  Cousin, 


His  Loves,  207 

is  full  of  life  and  passion.  These  jests  touching 
Cousin's  retrospective  flame,  which  amused  the 
salons  of  Paris  forty  years  ago,  and  which  are 
repeated  now  by  M.  Taine  and  me,  —  by  him 
almost  as  a  criticism,  and  by  me  almost  as  a 
commendation,  —  would  truly  be  very  barren 
if  these  portraits  by  M.  Cousin  had  as  little  life 
and  reality  as  M.  Taine  pretends.  He  contrasts 
this  gallery  with  the  portraits  by  Michelet  and 
Sainte-Beuve,  and  says  in  so  many  words  that 
Cousin  exhibits  nought  but  erudition  and  dec- 
lamation, while  the  two  others  have  the  true 
historical  genius,  which  is  creative. 

This  judgment  is,  in  my  opinion,  more  than 
severe.  Sainte-Beuve,  writing  as  a  very  witty 
and  highly -cultivated  man  converses  in  a 
drawing-room,  analyzes  and  describes  his  sub- 
ject with  precision  and  refinement,  takes  es- 
pecial care  to  be  true  and  complete,  and  re- 
turns, if  need  be,  to  a  detail  until  the  likeness  is 
perfect.  This  delicate  and  charming  artist  in- 
troduces you,  without  mannerism  or  apparatus, 
to  intimacy  with  his  personages,  discloses  their 
secrets,  enables  you  to  lay  your  finger  on  their 
qualities  and  on  their  defects.  As  to  his  quiet 
style,  you  do  not  think  of  it.  Of  Michelet's 
noisy  phrase,  on  the  other  hand,  you  cannot 
help  thinking,  for  it  is  unique,  unexpected. 
One  feels  that  Michelet  despises  correctness, 


208  Victor  Cousin. 

yet  he  is  never  incorrect.  His  phrase  is  often 
unfinished ;  perceiving  that  the  thought  is  un- 
derstood, he  hastens  on.  He  abounds  in  those 
magnificent  words  that  light  up  a  scene  or  a 
character;  and  he  scatters  them  broadcast,  for 
they  come  to  him  unsought.  No  one  can  pass 
with  more  ease  from  the  sublime  to  the  familiar. 
There  is  no  strain,  no  system;  you  are  borne 
onward  by  the  forceful  current  of  his  mind. 
A  whimsical  humorist  as  well  as  a  great  painter, 
he  always  puts  Michelet  in  a  corner  of  the  can- 
vas. Should  he  chance  not  to  mention  him- 
self, look  closely  and  you  will  find  a  character 
that  stands  for  him.  The  whole  is  charming, 
captivating,  confusing  ;  everything,  especially 
the  movement,  is  exaggerated.  Michelet  knows 
no  calm,  disdains  repose;  his  course  is  stormy, 
but  it  leads  to  an  enchanted  land.  Once  the 
wizard  has  taken  us  by  the  hand,  we  would 
not  stop  if  we  could.  For  these  magical  pic- 
tures, according  to  M.  Taine,  Cousin  substitutes 
a  formal  description.  Spectacles  on  nose, 
yardstick  in  hand,  he  takes  no  step  without 
adducing  reasons  and  citing  authorities  Had 
the  lady  a  particle  of  beauty,  he  tells  which 
of  her  portraits  indicate  it  and  which  omit  it. 
Describing  her  bedroom,  he  would  give  the 
upholsterer's  name  if  he  could.  For  the  pet- 
tiest detail  he  has  texts  which  he  quotes  from 


His  Loves.  209 

the  best  edition,  taking  care  to  give  the  date 
and  the  name  of  publisher  and  bookseller. 
"  He  is  all  the  while  thrusting  himself  into  the 
story  with  a  parcel  of  books  in  his  arms."  He 
drags  through  his  narratives  "  a  cartload  of 
documents."  Even  in  the  story  of  Madame 
de  Longueville,  where  his  heart  is  engaged, 
he  cannot  help  airing  his  pedantry.  "Just 
as  that  sweet  face  begins  to  take  shape  be- 
fore your  eyes,  you  hear  a  crash  of  tumbling 
folios." 

Well,  I  admit  the  pedantry,  the  citations, 
and  the  folios,  and  I  understand  the  com- 
plaint against  them.  Still,  I  may  have  my 
own  reasons  —  as  M.  Taine  has  not  —  for  be- 
ing fond  of  pedants.  Quotations,  references  to 
texts,  especially  when  too  frequent,  are  annoy- 
ing, I  grant.  Yet  they  give  confidence  ;  and 
this  is  one  step  toward  producing  a  lifelike 
impression.  Michelet  never  quotes;  there  is 
not  a  note  in  his  histories.  If,  by  the  merest 
chance  in  the  world,  he  writes  at  the  foot  of  the 
page  an  author's  name,  have  no  fear  of  his  add- 
ing chapter  and  title.  We  must  literally  take 
him  at  his  word ;  and  as  he  is  always  in  parox- 
ysms of  admiration  or  of  rage,  this  is  a  perilous 
course.  The  "  folios  "  in  M.  Taine's  sentence  are 
all  a  joke.  Cousin  was,  indeed,  one  of  the  last 
friends  of  folio  volumes.  None  are  made  now, 
14 


210  Victor  Cousin. 

except  by  the  Academy  of  Inscriptions ;  two 
or  three  centuries  ago  they  were  much  in  favor. 
M.  Cousin  and  I  have  together  rummaged 
many  a  folio  at  Mequignon's  and  at  Madame 
Porquet's.  It  was  not  very  handy,  but  one 
could  not  help  feeling  that  it  was  magnificent. 
I  really  think  that  M.  Cousin  would  have  pre- 
ferred to  read  "Cyrus  the  Great"  in  a  folio. 
But  he  does  not  make  such  excessive  use  of 
books  as  M.  Taine  is  pleased  to  say.  He  has 
a  right  to  speak  of  them  and  to  cite  them,  for 
he  knows  them  and  understands  them.  For 
my  part,  I  rather  like  to  have  people  preserve 
the  appearance  and  habits  —  I  may  almost 
say  the  garb  —  of  their  trade,  especially  if  this 
trade  be  a  pleasing  and  honorable  one.  I  shall 
always  remember  an  expression  that  M.  Saint- 
Marc  Girardin  made  use  of,  after  passing  an 
hour  with  M.  Nisard,  M.  Patin,  M.  Cuvillier- 
Fleury,  and  another  whom  I  need  not  name: 
"  We  were  a  company  of  three  or  four  pedants 
who  gave  one  another  much  delight."  Pedant 
or  not,  M.  Cousin  must  be  acknowledged  to 
have  made  his  literary  works  attractive,  since 
they  charmed  every  one  in  Paris  and  in  Europe 
who  is  interested  in  the  history  of  literature 
and  of  noble  sentiments.  I  do  not  think  that 
having  success  is  sufficient  proof  of  deserving 
it,  and  I  know  that  there  is  a  spurious  kind  of 


His  Loves.  211 

success ;  but  taking  into  consideration  the  sub- 
jects of  his  books,  the  author  and  his  audience, 
I  affirm  that  here  are  only  just  ideas,  noble 
sentiments,  ascertained  facts,  and  a  style  that 
would  have  been  enjoyed  at  Mademoiselle 
de  Scudery's.  After  all,  M.  Taine's  only  ob- 
jection to  M.  Cousin  is  that  he  wrote  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  As  a  nineteenth-century 
writer  he  is  very  incomplete,  and  of  contestable 
merit;  had  he  had  the  good  fortune  to  be 
born  during  Mazarin's  youth,  he  would  justly 
have  been  reckoned  among  the  greatest  wits. 
This  conclusion  gives  me  courage  to  meet  the 
somewhat  harsh  criticism  before  mentioned. 
We  are  in  many  respects  ahead  of  our  ances- 
tors, but  not  in  respect  to  literature.  Instead 
of  quarrelling  with  M.  Cousin  touching  cer- 
tain declamations  here  and  there  slipping  into 
his  books,  —  for  I  will  not  deny  that  he  had 
the  oratorical  temperament,  —  I  prefer  to 
repeat  with  Sainte-Beuve  that  "  this  wonderful 
writer's  inspirations,  whatever  direction  they 
may  take,  are  neither  swift  nor  eloquent  by 
halves." 

I  retain,  therefore,  all  my  former  admiration 
for  these  learned  and  artistic  volumes,  giving 
us  inventories  and  catalogues,  it  is  true,  but  in- 
vesting even  these  unpromising  materials  with 
a  certain  charm,  relating  facts,  fathoming  mo- 


212  Victor  Cousin. 

tives  and  feelings,  speaking  the  same  language 
as  the  heroines  portrayed,  sometimes  indeed 
making  the  picture  somewhat  solemn  and  con- 
ventional, but  only  to  render  the  likeness  more 
exact.  Perhaps  I  may  feel  that  such  a  man  as 
M.  Cousin  might  have  made  better  use  of  all 
this  knowledge,  sagacity,  and  eloquence.  But 
taken  for  what  they  are,  these  books  are  ex- 
ceedingly honorable  to  their  author  and  to 
contemporary  letters. 

Almost  all  these  papers  first  appeared  in  the 
"Journal  des  Savants"  (this  may  explain  their 
learned  airs)  or  in  the  "  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes;"  for  M.  Cousin  was  very  fond  of  re- 
handling  and  completing  his  thought,  throw- 
ing it  first  into  the  form  of  a  sketch,  then  of 
a  review  article,  and  finally  into  the  definitive 
form  of  a  volume,  to  which  —  having  com- 
pleted his  discovery  and  fully  developed  his 
thought — he  would  append  citations,  supple- 
ments, analytical  tables,  much  after  the  fashion 
of  his  ancestors,  the  scholars  and  wits  of  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  Even  dur- 
ing .the  metaphysical  fever  of  the  first  period 
of  his  life  he  sometimes  slipped  into  scholarly 
researches  and  literary  labors.  I  have  already 
pointed  out  that  in  1820  and  the  years  follow- 
ing, instead  of  composing  an  independent 
body  of  doctrine,  he  busied  himself  with  the 


His  Loves.  213 

publication  of  documents  and  commentaries,  — 
Proclus  and  Descartes ;  translations  of  Plato 
and  of  the  first  and  twelfth  books  of  Aristotle's 
"  Metaphysics;"  books  of  travel  and  of  peda- 
gogy; reports  on, the  schools  of  Holland  and 
of  Germany.  So  likewise  after  1830  his  works 
on  the  women  of  the  seventeenth  century  did 
not  absorb  him  to  such  an  extent  as  to  lead 
him  to  entirely  abandon  philosophy.  He  re- 
vised his  lecture  courses  as  a  whole,  and  pub- 
lished some  new  volumes  on  philosophy  in  its 
new  phase  as  the  official  philosophy.  His  life 
was  not  so  completely  cut  in  two  as  it  would 
seem.  One  might  have  guessed  that  the  trans- 
lator of  Plato  would  read  "  Cyrus  the  Great," 
while  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  commentator  on 
"  Cyrus  the  Great  "  has  translated  Plato.  The 
whole  secret  of  this  life  is,  that  Cousin  loved 
and  cultivated  most  of  all  the  politics  of  phi- 
losophy. He  took  up  philosophy  in  the  first 
place  as  a  subject  to  preach  on.  .  He  soon  got 
the  metaphysical  fever,  which  drove  him  for 
fifteen  years  athwart  the  schools,  and  left  him 
suddenly  at  the  moment  when  Philosophy 
abdicated  in  his  favor  and  recognized  him  as 
her  master.  His  great  services  are  of  the  politi- 
cal order.  M.  Janet  employs  all  his  great 
talent  to  rehabilitate  him  as  a  philosopher  and 
as  the  founder  of  a  school, —  a  task  that  need 


214  Victor  Cousin. 

never  be  undertaken  for  Kant,  Schelling,  or 
Hegel.  But  it  requires  no  effort  to  show  that 
Cousin  exerted  upon  philosophy,  upon  edu- 
cation, and  upon  French  literature  the  widest 
and  most  beneficent  influence. 

M.  Taine,  in  concluding  his  brilliant  and 
memorable  study  of  Cousin,  assures  us  that 
what  he  most  lacked  was  to  have  been  born 
in  the  seventeenth  century.  He  would  have 
entered  the  service  of  the  Church,  and  have 
become  the  favorite  preacher  of  those  great 
ladies  whom — thanks  to  him — we  know  so 
well.  M.  Taine  goes  to  the  length  of  taking  us 
to  hear  one  of  Cousin's  sermons,  and  of  describ- 
ing his  emotions  in  Madame  de  Longueville's 
presence. 

Over  against  this  picture  I  shall  modestly 
set  another.  The  Parisians  have  conceived 
the  idea  of  founding  a  great  school  of  higher 
learning,  or  some  other  excellent  institution  in 
which  a  great  and  noble  spirit  cannot  fail  to  be 
interested.  Cousin  has  been  asked  once  more 
to  occupy  his  chair  for  an  hour  to  explain 
their  aim  and  purpose.  He  straightway  leaves 
Cannes,  the  place  to  which  he  has  been  exiled 
by  his  physician,  and  defies  fatigue  that  he  may 
take  part  in  a  great  enterprise :  there  he  is.  It 
is  the  same  chair,  the  same  amphitheatre,  the 
same  Sorbonne;  it  is  also  the  same  man.  He 


His  Loves,.  215 

has  the  same  voice,  the  same  gesture,  the  same 
imagination,  the  same  energy  that  he  had  fifty 
years  ago.  As  he  enters,  he  runs  his  eyes 
over  the  audience.  The  young  are  still  there, 
another  generation,  as  eager  for  excitement 
and  for  knowledge  as  those  he  kne\v.  The 
youth  are  crowded  back  on  the  upper  benches, 
because  all  the  old  men  have  hastened  hither 
once  again  to  hear  the  voice  of  him  they  call 
master.  The  Institute  in  a  body  has  taken 
its  place  upon  the  benches;  beside  it  every 
one  in  Paris  who  holds  a  chair  or  works  in  a 
laboratory.  At  the  sight  of  him,  they  recall 
his  life,  his  wretched  childhood,  his  thorough 
and  brilliant  studies.  They  follow  him,  in 
fancy,  to  the  Normal  School,  which  he  is  the 
first  to  enter,  and  which  he  influences  so  pro- 
foundly, —  first  as  a  pupil,  immediately  after- 
ward, at  the  age  of  twenty,  as  instructor  in  Greek, 
at  twenty-one,  as  instructor  in  philosophy.  At 
twenty-three  he  is  Royer-Collard's  substitute 
in  the  Literary  Faculty.  Where  does  he  lec- 
ture? Close  by,  in  the  halls  of  the  Du  Plessis 
College,  —  then  annexed  to  the  College  of 
Louis  the  Great.  But  he  does  not  stay  there 
long ;  the  novelty  and  brilliancy  of  his  teach- 
ing attract  such  throngs  that  he  has  to  open 
this  very  hall  of  the  Sorbonne,  to  which  he 
returns  to-day  after  half  a  century.  Hither  he 


2i6  Victor  Cousin. 

comes,  from  1815  to  1820,  to  initiate  young 
men  into  all  the  great  problems  of  philosophy. 
La  Romiguiere  had  charmed  him  by  his  witty 
and  graceful  diction ;  Royer-Collard  had  made 
a  conquest  of  him  by  the  authority  and  force 
of  his  dialectics;  but  they  were  both  absorbed 
in  the  study  of  the  faculties  of  the  soul,  while 
Cousin  discusses  all  the  problems  of  human 
destiny,  the  origin  of  the  universe,  and  the  de- 
velopment of  history.  All  systems  are  familiar 
to  him,  all  sciences  bring  him  their  tribute ;  he 
describes  the  march  of  the  centuries  and  the 
evolution  of  human  thought.  He  rises  so  high, 
he  plunges  so  deep,  he  sees  so  far,  that  the  sci- 
ence he  sets  forth  seems  to  be  the  synthesis  of 
all  sciences.  He  speaks  slowly,  because  his 
speech  follows  the  movement  of  his  thought, 
and  his  thought  seeks  out  the  truth  under 
the  very  eyes  of  his  hearers,  who  share  the 
emotions  aroused  by  his  discoveries.  What 
powerful  language,  glowing,  varied,  easy  and 
yet  correct,  clear  and  yet  altogether  new, 
adapting  itself  to  the  most  difficult  deductive 
reasoning  in  metaphysics  and  yet  losing  none 
of  its  limpidity,  combining  in  just  proportions 
elevation  and  grace,  by  turns  stimulating  and 
charming,  —  a  scholar's  learning,  a  thinker's 
strength,  a  master's  eloquence ! 

So  young  and  already  so  famous,  he  lives  a 


His  Laves.  217 

hermit  amid  his  books;  to  him  the  world  is 
nothing ;  he  knows,  loves,  desires  only  learning. 
The  emissaries  of  the  restored  monarchy  dog 
his  steps ;  but  he  is  as  insensible  to  fear  as  to 
ambition,  so  that  one  day  the  reaction,  grown 
all-powerful,  crushes  him  with  its  heavy  hand. 
Reduced  to  silence,  he  buries  himself  in  Ger- 
many, —  a  land  to  Frenchmen  mysterious  and 
unknown,  where  he  is  welcomed  by  scholars 
and  persecuted  by  the  government  Resuming 
his  chair  in  1828,  "  upon  the  return  of  our 
constitutional  hopes,"  with  the  double  halo  of 
dismissal  and  persecution,  he  brings  to  his 
hearers  a  wholly  new  philosophy  ;  not  the  phi- 
»  losophy  of  the  seventeenth  century,  but  a  phi- 
losophy living  and  powerful,  summing  up  the 
aspirations  of  the  nineteenth  century,  which 
must  forever  bear  its  stamp. 

The  year  1830  invests  him  with  the  control 
of  philosophical  instruction ;  to  this  he  brings 
all  the  intensity  he  has  hitherto  displayed  as 
a  teacher.  He  assumes  the  management  of 
the  Normal  School,  presides  in  the  examina- 
tions for  fellowships,  gives  professors  their  pro- 
gramme and  their  orders,  selects  them,  directs 
them,  animates  them  with  his  own  zeal,  nour- 
ishes them  with  his  doctrine,  makes  them  part- 
ners in  his  task;  for  fifteen  years  he  thus 
teaches  at  one  and  the  same  time  in  all  the 


218  Victor  Cousin. 

chairs  of  the  realm.  The  University  is  at- 
tacked :  he  defends  it.  Philosophy  is  in  peril : 
he  saves  it.  If  he  turns  away  from  philosophy 
for  a  moment,  it  is  to  assist  M.  Guizot  in  found- 
ing primary  instruction.  The  books  that  he 
has  written  would  alone  form  a  whole  library. 
All  this  teaching,  this  administrative  work, 
these  writings,  —  do  they  not  fill  his  life  amply 
and  nobly?  Amid  all  these  labors  he  finds 
time  to  hold  the  foremost  place  as  a  talker  in 
the  Parisian  salons,  —  for  society  made  a  con- 
quest of  him  after  the  austerity  of  his  youthful 
years,  and  he  learned  that  species  of  literature, 
peculiar  to  France,  known  as  social  conversa- 
tion, in  which  he  had  no  rivals.  His  inexhaus- 
tible energy  expended  itself  in  writings,  in 
lectures,  in  conversation,  in  correspondence, 
in  action.  He  knew  no  sickness,  no  weak- 
ness. Even  when  immured  in  the  dungeons  of 
Prussia,  a  prey  to  anxiety  about  the  result  of 
his  trial  and  the  completion  of  his  "  Plato,"  he 
studied  German  and  translated  some  poems  of 
Goethe.  Upon  the  advent  of  the  Empire,  the 
control  of  instruction  escapes  him.  His  activity 
takes  refuge  in  the  Academies.  He  enlightens 
them,  guides  them,  and,  to  keep  nothing  back, 
intrigues  in  them.  He  has  known  all  the  great 
survivors  of  the  last  century  and  the  Revolu- 
tion, all  the  great  strugglers  of  the  Restoration, 


His  Loves.  219 

all  the  statesmen  of  the  July  Monarchy,  all  the 
philosophers  and  all  the  great  writers  of  France 
and  of  Europe.  We  find  him  here,  at  seventy- 
five,  in  full  possession  of  his  faculties,  and  with- 
out one  wasted  hour  in  his  life.  This  man  will 
work  on  the  very  day  of  his  death.  He  can 
face  all  the  illustrious  men  who  surround  him, 
—  orators,  scholars,  philosophers,  historians ; 
he  is  the  peer  of  any  among  them ;  and  pres- 
ently, when  you  hear  him  speak,  you  will  ad- 
mit that  none  of  them  can  compare  with  him 
in  eloquence. 

It  is  here,  my  dear  Taine,  in  the  midst 
of  this  audience,  and  not  amid  the  fashion- 
able devotees  of  the  seventeenth  century,  that 
I  would  fain  have  heard  M.  Cousin's  last 
sermon.  Had  he  spoken  before  the  throng 
I  have  described,  while  every  listener  thus  re- 
called to  mind  the  splendid  achievements  of  his 
life,  he  would  have  appeared  what  he  really 
was,  —  one  of  the  most  powerful  masters  of  this 
nineteenth  century,  to  which  he  belongs  both 
by  his  excellences  and  by  his  defects,  and 
which  he  made  his  own  by  virtue  of  the  lessons 
he  gave  and  the  services  he  rendered.  His 
friends,  who  were  never  numerous,  his  pupils, 
who  are  innumerable,  all  who  knew  him  inti- 
mately, may  have  grievances  against  his  person 
or  against  his  doctrines.  For  all  that,  he  is  one 


22O  Victor  Cousin. 

of  the  solidest  glories  of  his  native  city  and  of 
all  France,  —  one  of  the  men  who  have  most 
strongly  moulded  the  thought  of  our  country 
and  of  our  age. 

Into  his  life  no  woman  enters,  —  at  least,  no 
living  woman ;  in  his  heart  and  in  his  talent 
this  great  blank  remains. 


THE  END. 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


Lls 
•    01  JAN  2  5 1999 


-  21  a 


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